LIBR ARYOF CONG RESS, 

Chap* Copyright No. 



Shelf. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF 
ST. HIPPOLYTUS 



THE PAPACY AND THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE 
LIGHT OF DISCOVERY 



BY 

PARKE P.f LOURNOY 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

Prof. WALTER W. MOORE, D.D., LL.D. 

OF UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, VIRGINIA 




WASW^ 7 q ^ ' 



New York Chicago Toronto 

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
1896 



I 



KOXONIHSVM 

3HX I 



3HX ' 



^ 



Copyright, 1896, by 
Fleming H. Revell Company 



THE NEW YORK TYPE-SETTING COMPANY 
THE CAXTON PRESS 



TO THAT GREAT AND GOOD TEACHER OF MANY 

GRATEFUL PUPILS, THE 

REV. R. L. DABNEY, D.D., LL.D., 

ONE OF THEM AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATES 

THIS VOLUME 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PACK 

Dedication 5 

Introduction 9 

To the Reader 13 

I. The Marble Chair and its Occupant 15 

II. A Search-light Found 27 

III. Two Specimens of Infallibility 33 

IV. A Calm for the Christians 43 

V. The Banker Made a Bishop 51 

VI. Popes (?) and Presbyters 59 

VII. " The Mystery of Iniquity " 65 

VIII. Callistus and the Callistians 71 

IX. The Survival of the Unfittest 79 

X. Two Great Christians Meet 89 

XI. The Search-light and the Canon 103 

XII. The Search-light on the Heretics 125 

XIII. Ferdinand Christian Baur 139 

XIV. Ernest Renan 149 

XV. The Search-light and New Discoveries— 

THE " DlATESSARON " 1^3 

XVI. " The New Syriac Gospels " 177 

XVII. The New Testament in the First Century . . 197 
XVIII. The Portraiture of Christ 225 



INTRODUCTION 



A SHORT and readable book dealing in a 
popular way with certain claims of the Romish 
Church, and certain theories of modern rationalism 
in regard to the authority of Scripture, on the 
one hand, and the genuineness of certain portions 
of Scripture, on the other, is a desideratum of our 
contemporary Christian literature. The demand 
for such a work is emphasized by the wide cir- 
culation, even in Protestant America, of a book 
by a well-known cardinal which reiterates the 
dogma of papal infallibility and other errors, and 
which professes to have reached its forty-seventh 
edition ; and also by the wide circulation of the 
theories of the Tubingen school of critics, through 
" its small imitators and camp-followers along the 
byways of popular literature," as to the late origin 
of the gospels, especially that of John. This de- 
mand cannot be met by referring those who have 
been disturbed by such representations to volu- 
9 



IO INTRODUCTION 

minous treatises of a technical character, as all 
pastors who have had to deal with active minds 
in reading communities well know. Nor is the 
unsuitablenessof these elaborate works for general 
reading the only reason for their failure to meet 
the present need. Some of the most decisive 
facts in the controversies referred to have come 
to light since the " standard " works on these 
subjects were written. For instance, it has long 
been known that there is in the Vatican at Rome 
an ancient marble statue of an eminent Christian 
minister, author, and martyr, who was born about 
fifty years after the death of the Apostle John, 
and who has for centuries been reverenced as one 
of the saints in the Roman calendar; but not 
until the discovery of his great work entitled 
" Philosophoumena ; or, Refutation of all Here- 
sies," in 1842 (or, rather, until the publication 
of it in 185 1 ), was it known, even to scholars, that 
this martyr and saint thus honored by Rome 
herself, was, as Dr. Schaff has well said, " an 
irrefutable witness against the claims of an infal- 
lible papacy, which was entirely unknown in the 
third century." And not until that discovery 
was made, and others still more recent, such as 
Tatian's "'Diatessaron " (published in 1888) and 
the ancient Syriac version of the gospels (found 
at Mount Sinai in 1892), was it known how irre- 



INTRODUCTION 1 1 

sistible was the evidence of the genuineness of the 
New Testament Scriptures. 

These discoveries and others are described in 
the most interesting manner by Mr. Flournoy in 
the following pages, and their importance to the 
cause of truth is pointed out with admirable 
clearness and force. His " saint with a search- 
light " is the same whose statue still sits in the 
Vatican, whose fcsta is still observed on the 22d 
of August in accordance with the appointment 
of the Breviary, and whose truthfulness is thus 
vouched for in the strongest manner by the, 
Church of Rome herself, and the same whose 
recovered work, " Refutation of all Heresies," 
demonstrates the absurdity of Rome's claim that 
there has been a continuous chain of infallible 
successors of Peter. Taking his stand beside this 
ancient worthy about the beginning of the third 
century, Mr. Flournoy shows us that this saint's 
search-light reveals, in four directions, undeniable 
evidence that the New Testament came down 
from apostolic times. 

It will be observed, further, that this evidence 
is not of the subjective and uncertain sort, but 
external, cumulative, and conclusive. It is pre- 
sented by Mr. Flournoy in a vivacious and at- 
tractive style, without any of the ponderous dull- 
ness of the tomes, and yet with careful attention 



12 INTRODUCTION 

to the reliableness of his authorities and the ex- 
actness of his statements. In short, he has written 
an engaging and instructive book on an important 
subject, and it is commended to the earnest 
attention of all who wish to know the truth con- 
cerning certain urgent questions of the day. 

W. W. Moore. 



TO THE READER 



At the extremity of one of the three slender 
tongues of a strangely shaped peninsula, which 
runs out from the shores of Macedonia into the 
iEgean Archipelago, there rises from the blue 
water's edge a mountain which is in some respects 
one of the most remarkable in the world. Mount 
Athos, with its twenty monasteries, eight thou- 
sand monks, and most peculiar rules of celibacy, 
has been known for ages as the Holy Mountain. 
With its lofty peak of white limestone piercing 
the sky, it is the most prominent object in a 
scene of surpassing loveliness. 

Among the vast stores of the relics of early 
Christian literature in the libraries of these mon- 
asteries, some of which date from the time of 
Constantine, there was found more than fifty 
years ago a work of great value, written by St. 
Hippolytus, a man who was born little more than 
a half-century after the death of the Apostle 
John. Fresh interest has been created in this 
book and its author by the recent discovery of 
another work from the same hand. 

An article by Professor George T. Stokes, of 
13 



14 TO THE READER 

Dublin University, published in the Sunday at 
Home, London, was the means by which the 
writer's attention was drawn to these discoveries, 
and he has found the writings of St. Hippolytus 
to be, indeed, a light shining in a dark place — a 
veritable search-light on men and affairs in the 
church in Rome before and after the year 200. 
In addition to this, they reveal many proofs of 
the genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures. 

The distinguished president of Princeton Uni- 
versity, Dr. Francis L. Patton, has lately been 
quoted as saying that the great question of our 
times is, What is the Bible? A question of the 
day scarcely inferior in importance to any other 
but this one is, What is the papacy ? This little 
volume, it is hoped, will furnish welcome aid to 
honest inquirers in finding the true answers to 
these questions. 

In pursuing the studies suggested by the article 
of Professor Stokes just referred to, the author 
has followed some of the paths along which the 
light of discovery has fallen, and if he can take 
others by the hand and show them what has been 
most interesting and profitable to himself, in such 
a way as to give them a tithe of the pleasure and 
benefit which he himself has derived from this 
pursuit, he will be very thankful. 

P. P. F. 

Bethesda Manse, July 21, 1896. 



! 
THE MARBLE CHAIR AND ITS OCCUPANT 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF 
ST. HIPPOLYTUS 



THE MARBLE CHAIR AND ITS OCCUPANT 

THERE has been for more than three centuries 
in the Vatican at Rome the statue of an eminent 
Christian, who was born about fifty years after 
the death of the " disciple whom Jesus loved." 
He was an able and voluminous writer, with keen, 
clear vision of passing events, and the faculty for 
portraying them — the ability " to hold, as 'twere, 
the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own 
feature, scorn her own image, and the very age 
and body of the time, his form and pressure." 
Hence his account of his own times is very in- 
teresting and valuable. 

Fifty-four years ago that one of his many 
books which is probably the most interesting and 
valuable of them all was recovered after an en- 
i7 



1 8 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

tombment of many centuries ; while quite recently 
still another long-lost treasure, a product of his 
pen, has come to light. 

The first of these three discoveries is thus de- 
scribed by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth:* 

"In the year 1551 some excavations were 
made on the Via Tiburtina, or road to Tivoli, not 
far from the Church of S. Lorenzo, near Rome. 
The clearing away of the accumulations of an 
ancient cemetery and chapel on that site led to an 
interesting discovery. 

" A marble statue of a figure sitting in a chair 
was brought to light. The person there repre- 
sented was of a venerable aspect, bald, with a 
flowing beard, and clad in the Greek pallium. 

" The two sides and back of the chair were 
found to be covered with inscriptions in Greek 
uncial letters. The right side of the chair ex- 
hibits a calendar, which designates the days of 
the months of March and April, with which the 
fourteenth day of the moon coincides. This 
calendar, indicating the paschal full moons, is con- 
structed for seven cycles of sixteen years each, 
dating from the first year of the Emperor Alex- 
ander Severus, which is proved from this calen- 
dar to be A.D. 222. 

" According to the theory on which the calen- 
dar is made, after the completion of one cycle of 

* " Hippolytus and the Church of Rome," pp. 42-45. 



THE MARBLE CHAIR AND ITS OCCUPANT 1 9 

sixteen years, the full moons recur on the same 
day of the month, but one day earlier in the 
week ; and the table is formed so as to represent 
in seven columns the day on which the full moon 
falls during seven periods of sixteen years. 

" The other side of the chair represents a table 
indicating the day on which the Easter festival 
falls in each year, for the same period of cycles 
of sixteen years, dating also from A.D. 222. 

" When the fourteenth day of the moon falls 
on a Saturday then the Easter festival is not to 
be celebrated on the morrow, or following Sun- 
day, but on the Sunday after that. 

" This regulation was in accordance with the 
Latin practice, but at variance with the Alexan- 
drine custom, according to which the paschal 
table also is constructed in seven columns of six- 
teen years each, and indicates the day of the 
month in which the paschal festival would fall 
from A.D. 222 to 333. 

" Many things in this calendar betoken that it 
is the work of a Western, and that it was designed 
for the Western Church. 

" The carved back of the chair, which was 
somewhat mutilated, presents a catalogue of 
titles of works, composed, doubtless, by the 
person who occupies the chair. 

" This statue thus discovered was in a frag- 
mentary state, but was happily preserved by 



20 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

Cardinal Marcello Cervino, afterward Pope Mar- 
cellus II., and was removed as a valuable monu- 
ment of Christian antiquity to the Vatican, and 
was restored by Roman sculptors as far as might 
be under the auspices of Pope Pius IV." 

The questions which naturally occur to us at 
this point are such as these : Who is the person 
represented in this statue ? In what place did he 
live ? What circumstances called forth the works 
whose names are inscribed on the back of his 
marble chair? 

As has long been known, this person is Hip- 
polytus, a disciple of Irenaeus. Irenaeus was 
himself a disciple of Polycarp. Polycarp, after 
having served our Lord " eighty and six years," 
died a martyr's death at Smyrna in A.D. 155.* 
He was a disciple of the Apostle John. Hippoly- 
tus, who was himself a martyr, is one of the saints 
in the Roman calendar, his festa being marked 
in the Breviary as on August 22d. 

About his position in the church there seems 
to be some divergence of statement, and but little 
is known of his personal history, owing, doubt- 
less, in part, to the severity of the persecution of 
the giant emperor Maximin, under whom he 
suffered. He is often called the Bishop of Por- 
tus. " Episcopus Portuensis " is his title inscribed 
on the base of his statue in the Vatican. Portus 

* According to latest and best authorities. 



THE MARBLE CHAIR AND ITS OCCUPANT 21 

Romanus was at the mouth of the Tiber on the 
northern side, built there as the port of the city 
which was the mistress of the world — the center 
of commerce as well as of power — partly because 
Ostia, the original port on the other side of the 
Tiber, had become less suitable for this purpose 
by reason of sand-bars.* 

He is also called a presbyter or elder, and 
again he is sometimes spoken of as a Roman 
bishop. The disagreement of these statements is 
doubtless only apparent. In the New Testament 
the names presbyter (or elder) and bishop are 
used to designate the same officer — the name 
elder (prcsbutcros) referring to his dignity as a 
ruler, and the name bishop (episcopos) pointing 
to his peculiar function as an overseer in the 
church. Now it is probable that at the early age 
at which Hippolytus wrote the scriptural usage 
was still maintained, and the same person was 
sometimes called elder and sometimes bishop.f 
It has been suggested, as an explanation of the 



* Says Bunsen : " He was also called the Bishop of the Nations, 
probably from the fact that, as bishop of the port of Rome, he 
came in contact with representatives of many nations who landed 
at or embarked from his city " (" Hippolytus and his Age," vol. 
iv., p. 25). 

t That eminent prelatist, Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe, says : 
" But it seems to me to be based upon the relations of Hippolytus 
as one of the synod, or ' presbytery,' without consent of which the 
bishop could do nothing important." 



2 2 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

fact that he is sometimes spoken of as a bishop 
of Rome, that, as Portus was the port of Rome 
and only fifteen miles away, it was natural for 
those at a distance to think of him as a resident 
of the imperial city. Whether he resided in 
Portus or in Rome itself, he was certainly a 
member of the presbytery, or council of presby- 
ters, of Rome, and a very prominent and influen- 
tial one. 

It is not improbable that he resided first in 
Portus and then in Rome. His writings, espe- 
cially the ninth and tenth books of the " Refuta- 
tion of all Heresies," indicate that he was pastor 
of a congregation in the city of Rome. The his- 
torian Eusebius thus speaks of Hippolytus:* "At 
the same time Hippolytus, who composed many 
treatises,! also wrote a work on the Passover. In 
this he traces back the series of times, and presents 
a certain canon comprising a period of sixteen 
years, limiting his computations to the first year 
of the Emperor Alexander." A list of works of 
Hippolytus is then given, concluding with one 
"Against all Heresies." Eusebius adds, "You 
will find many others still preserved by many." 

We know from other sources that Hippolytus 

* " Hist. Eccl.," bk. vi., chap. xxii. 

t Dr. Schaff speaks of Hippolytus as " the most learned divine 
and most voluminous writer of the Roman Church in the third 
century" (" Church History," vol. ii., p. 763). 



THE MARBLE CHAIR AND ITS OCCUPANT 23 

wrote several other books, some of which, in 
whole or in part, are still extant. Our chief in- 
terest now is in the last one here named, and in 
one not named in this list, but often spoken of by- 
ancient writers, and long known in part from 
interesting fragments. This last work is a com- 
mentary on the Book of Daniel. It was discov- 
ered a few years ago by Dr. Basilios Georgiades 
on the island of Chalce, near Constantinople. It 
is on many accounts worthy of notice. For in- 
stance, " in it Hippolytus quotes the four gospels 
as being the very words and teaching of Christ." * 

The larger part of the work which stands last 
in the list of Eusebius, that " Against all Here- 
sies," was discovered more than fifty years ago, 
and its contents are of very great interest. They 
give such a lifelike picture of the church in Rome 
of that day, and of persons in connection with it, 
as can be found nowhere else.f 

As Hippolytus proceeds to deal with the here- 
sies of his own times, he lets in some very unwel- 
come light for those who would have us believe 

* See article by Professor Stokes in the Sunday at Home, 
London, for May, 1892. 

t " In the two last books [i.e., the ninth and tenth of the 
" Refutation "] we have the narrative of an eye-witness of im- 
portant events which took place in the second and third centuries 
after Christ in the Church of Rome — events of which our previous 
ecclesiastical histories contained no notice " (W. E. Tayler, in 
" Hippolytus and the Church of the Third Century"). 



24 THE SEARCH-UGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

that the papacy existed from apostolic times. As 
says Dr. Schaff, " The Roman Catholic Church 
placed him in the number of its saints and martyrs, 
little suspecting that he would come forward in 
the nineteenth century as a witness against her." 

It is especially unfortunate for the Church of 
Rome that after his " Refutation of all Heresies " 
had been lost he was canonized as a saint The 
infallible church, having put him into her Breviary, 
and having recognized him not only as a saint, 
but as one of the highest rank, — a martyr too, 
— now finds him a very inconvenient saint to 
carry in her calendar in view of the things which 
he is found to have said about her in her earlier 
days. The high esteem and reverence in which 
Hippolytus was held in the Church of Rome is 
made evident not only by this marble statue, — 
so skilfully made as to show that it antedates the 
decline of art at Rome, so carefully restored 
when recovered from its long entombment in 
155 1, and honored with a place in the Vatican 
ever since, — but by the following story of a visit 
made by Pope Alexander III. to the shrine of St. 
Hippolytus at St. Denis, to which place his bones 
had been carried from Rome in the reign of 
Charlemagne : 

" On the threshold of one of the chapels the 
pope paused to ask whose relics it contained. 
' Those of St. Hippolytus,' was the answer. ' Non 



THE MARBLE CHAIR. AND ITS OCCUPANT 2$ 

credo, non credo,' replied the infallible authority. 
' The bones of St. Hippolytus were never removed 
from the holy city.' But St. Hippolytus, whose 
dry bones apparently had as little reverence for the 
spiritual progeny of Zephyrinus and Callistus " 
(" popes " (?) A.D. 197-222) " as the ancient bish- 
op's tongue and pen had manifested toward these 
saints themselves " (how much this was we shall 
see presently), " was so very angry that he rum- 
bled his bones inside the reliquary with a noise 
like thunder. To what lengths he would have 
gone if rattling had not sufficed we dare not con- 
jecture. But the pope, falling on his knees, ex- 
claimed in terror, ' I believe, O my lord Hippoly- 
tus, I believe! Pray be quiet.' And he built an 
altar of marble there to appease the disquieted 
saint." * 

From this characteristic medieval legend let us 
turn to the second discovery, which has, so to 
speak, given voice to this old saint who had been 
sitting silent for so many centuries in his marble 
chair. 

* Dr. Schaff's " Church History," vol. ii., p. 770. 



II 

A SEARCH-LIGHT FOUND 



II 

A SEARCH-LIGHT FOUND 

In 1842 M. Villemain, minister of public in- 
struction under Louis Philippe, King of France, 
sent Minoides Mynas, a learned Greek, to search 
for literary treasures supposed to be hidden in 
old libraries in the East. When he returned 
there was found among the old manuscripts which 
he brought a book written in Greek with a dou- 
ble title, " Philosophizings ; or, Refutation of all 
Heresies." * 

A considerable part of the work was wanting — 
the second, third, and part of the fourth books ; 
the rest of the ten books remained, and were de- 
posited, with other finds, in the Royal Library of 
Paris. 

In 185 1 an English translation was published 
by Miller at Oxford, and the work ascribed to 
Origen. This was done, probably, because the 

* Qihooofovfieva, fj Kara Aipeoeov Uaaov E/ley&J?. 
29 



30 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

first book had long been known, and in the Bene- 
dictine edition had been erroneously accredited 
to this father. Scholars very soon discovered 
that a mistake had been made, and, following the 
lead of Duncker and Jacobi, Bunsen established 
the true authorship. 

It is useless to weary the reader with the evi- 
dence, though the line of argument is compara- 
tively plain and clear. Suffice it to say that the 
well-nigh universal verdict of scholars now is that 
it is the work of Hippolytus, to whom a book 
with this title is ascribed by Eusebius, Jerome, 
Photius, and other ancient writers. 

The Romanists draw back from this conclusion 
for a very transparent reason. It is this : " He 
stands out as an irrefutable witness against the 
claims of an infallible papacy, which was entirely 
unknown in the third century."* 

Dr. Dollinger was an exception among Roman 
Catholics, and, as is well known, he long ago 
(1870) seceded from the papal church on account 
of the decree of the Vatican Council on the infalli- 
bility of the popes. 

Says Dr. Schaff, " Cardinal Newman declares 
it to be simply ' incredible that a man so singularly 
honored as St. Hippolytus should be the author 
of that malignant libel on his contemporary popes,' 
etc. But he offers no solution, nor can he. 
* Schaff 's " Church History," vol. ii., p. 774. 



A SEARCH-LIGHT FOUND 31 

Dogma versus history is as unavailing as the 
pope's bull against the comet." * 

But it is time that we should look into this 
long-lost book and see what light it throws on 
that old world in which Hippolytus lived his life 
of earnest toil. In the earlier books, false and 
heathenish philosophies are dealt with ; hence 
the appropriateness of the first title, " Philoso- 
phizings." 

In the later books he treats of heresies among 
those who professed Christianity, which is implied 
in the second title, " Refutation of all Heresies." 
It is made quite plain that most of the heresies 
sprang either from some form of false philosophy 

* "The authorship of Hippolytus is proved or conceded by 
Bunsen, Gieseler, Jacobi, DSllinger, Duncker, Schneidewin, Cas- 
pari, Milman, Robertson, Plummer, Salmon. Cardinal Newman 
denies it on doctrinal grounds, but offers no solution " (Dr. Schaff's 
" Church History," vol. ii., p. 762). For the full proof see 
Bunsen's " Hippolytus and his Age," vol. i., p. 13, and W. Elfe 
Tayler's " Hippolytus and the Church of the Third Century." 

Added to the testimony of scholars ancient and modern, to- 
gether with the inscription on the back of the marble chair in 
which the statue of Hippolytus is seated, including the " Refu- 
tation " among his other works, we have the testimony of the 
author himself. In the tenth book of the " Refutation of all 
Heresies " he uses these words : " My book which treats of the 
essence of the universe \Tlepi tijq tov Travrdg ovaiaq]." The book 
" On the Universe" is one of those named in the inscription on 
the back of his chair. This binds the " Refutation " to the oc- 
cupant of the marble chair with a chain which sophistry will strive 
in vain to break. There are few books of ancient times the 
authorship of which is more certain. 



32 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

or from Judaism. He seems to consider that the 
statement of these heresies is sufficient for their 
refutation. Indeed, he says, " For the opinions 
of heretics themselves are sufficient for their own 
condemnation." Hence he refrains almost entirely 
from argument, and merely presents their views. 

With these matters we are not now interested, 
and can only lament the fact that in the Christian 
church thus early there was so sad a departure 
from the faith and practice of the religion of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. In view of these facts, we 
can well appreciate the need and the wisdom of 
the solemn warnings of Paul and John to the 
effect that " perilous times " were at hand. When 
we see this " hydra-headed heresy," as Hippoly- 
tus aptly styles it, and the terrible lapse into un- 
godly living on the part of those who had departed 
from the faith, and that under the leadership and 
protection of the Bishop of Rome, we have before 
our eyes an object-lesson on the intimate connec- 
tion between a belief of the truth and godly living, 
and on the importance of what is so much decried 
in our day — a creed in accordance with the Scrip- 
tures as the necessary norm and inspiration of 
scriptural holiness of life. 

It is in the ninth and tenth books of the " Ref- 
utation" that we have this picture of the church in 
Rome as it then was — a picture whose vividness 
of delineation reveals the hand of an eye-witness. 






Ill 

TWO SPECIMENS OF INFALLIBILITY 



33 



Ill 

TWO SPECIMENS OF INFALLIBILITY 

Let us see what light is thrown by the occu- 
pant of the marble chair on the so-called chair of 
Peter at this period. 

In the ninth book of the " Refutation of all 
Heresies" we find the following account of two 
of the contemporaries of Hippoly tus, whose names 
are in all the catalogues of the popes, both of whom 
were canonized as saints, and each of whom re- 
ceives in our day the worship of devout Roman- 
ists on the day marked as his festa in the Breviary : 

" There was a certain man named Noetus of 
Smyrna.* This fellow introduced a heresy taken 
from Heraclitus.f A certain man named Epigo- 

* On Noetus and his heresy, see Neander's " Church History," 
p. 371 (Rose's translation). 

t Heraclitus the Obscure was a Greek philosopher, a native 
of Athens, and was born probably in the sixth century B.C. He 
taught that, by the operation of a light ethereal fluid, all things, 
animate and inanimate, were created. His unintelligible style 
and strange views gave him the surname " the Obscure." Hip- 
polytus shows very clearly how the heresy of Noetus was derived 
from the philosophy of Heraclitus. 

35 



36 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

nus,* who was his agent and scholar, came to 
sojourn at Rome, and disseminated his odious 
doctrine. Cleomenes,* an alien from the church 
both in life and manners, having become his dis- 
ciple, helped to establish his doctrine. 

" At this period Zephyrinus supposed that he 
governed the church; being an illiterate and 
avaricious man, [and] being tempted by the offer 
of gain, he gave permission to those who resorted 
to Cleomenes to become his scholars. At length, 
being himself deceived, he fell into the same error 
in which Callistus — whose life and the heresy in- 
vented by him I will soon set forth — was his ad- 
viser and associate in wickedness. 

" During the succession of these [bishops] this 
school continued, being strengthened and in- 
creased by the cooperation of Zephyrinus and 
Callistus." f 

Now it is to be remembered that Zephyrinus 
was, according to the catalogues of the popes, the 
pope at this time. We see, then, what view a most 
intelligent contemporary held of his infallibility. 

Hippolytus continues in a strain which does 
not at all impress us with his intention to yield 
implicit obedience to a supreme authority : 

* Theodoret also mentions Epigonus and Cleomenes {ibid., 

P- 371). 

t Theodoret represents Callistus as developing the heresy of 
Noetus. (See Dr. Salmon's article on Callistus in Smith's " Bio- 
graphical Dictionary.") 



TWO SPECIMENS OF INFALLIBILITY 37 

" Yet we never gave place to them [i.e., 
Zephyrinus and Callistus], but, on the contrary, 
frequently opposed them and confuted them, 
compelling them against their inclination to con- 
fess the truth. This confession they made at the 
time through the influence of shame and in con- 
sequence of being compelled to do so by the force 
of truth." This doubtless refers to discussions in 
the presbytery, or assembly of " the blessed pres- 
byters," of which we shall presently see some ac- 
counts. He continues : " But shortly afterward 
they returned to wallow in the same mire." 

Hippolytus proceeds to " set forth the wicked 
character of their doctrine," and shows us how 
they adopted the view of Heraclitus and derived 
from it one of the most wicked of heresies, which 
was stamped with the name of the second of these 
ecclesiastics, his followers being called Callistians. 
He then goes on to give us a lively picture of 
Callistus, afterward pope and saint, now called 
Calixtus I. : 

'* Callistus strengthened this heresy, being a 
man crafty in wickedness and versatile in decep- 
tion, aiming at the chair of the episcopate. He 
stirred up Zephyrinus, an illiterate and unlearned 
man, unacquainted with ecclesiastical affairs. This 
person being a receiver of bribes and a covetous 
man, Callistus led just as he pleased by the influ- 
ence of his dogmas and unlawful demands. More- 



38 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

over, Callistus was continually instigating him to 
introduce strife among the brethren, when Callis- 
tus himself afterward managed to allure both 
parties by wily words to his own side. At one 
time he would speak the truth to one party, who 
held sentiments agreeing therewith, and thus de- 
luded them under the pretense of agreeing with 
them. Ac another time he would [speak] similarly 
to those who professed the opinion of Sabellius, 
whom he displaced when he was able to keep him 
steadfast ; for at the time that Sabellius was ex- 
horted by us he did not show obstinacy ; but 
when he was alone with Callistus he was instigated 
by him (professing to believe as he did) to in- 
cline to the theory of Cleomenes. But he [Sa- 
bellius] did not at this time discover his subtlety ; 
but afterward he found it out, as I will briefly 
relate." 

The narrative brings before us a scene in " the 
assembly " of " the blessed presbyters," in which 
Hippolytus appears to be on equal terms with 
Zephyrinus and Callistus, and, indeed, handles 
them without gloves as he demonstrates the falsity 
of their teachings on the doctrine of the Trinity. 

To throw light on the state of things in the 
church, Hippolytus gives us a rather startling view 
of the antecedents of this man who played so 
strange a part in the ecclesiastical drama enacted 
in Rome in his day, and the narrative exhibits the 



TWO SPECIMENS OF INFALLIBILITY 39 

doings of a very remarkable saint. He tells us 
that he was of the same age with Callistus, and 
the story is evidently that of an eye-witness of 
much that is related. 

Callistus was a slave in the service of a wealthy 
Christian, one Carpophorus, " a man of the faith, 
belonging to the household of Caesar." Now we 
know that at this period slaves were often profes- 
sional men, authors, or able men in the conduct 
of great business enterprises. Not only was this 
the case among the Greeks and Romans, but the 
parables of the talents and of the pounds show us 
that the same state of things was common among 
the Jews. Callistus was ambitious to be a busi- 
ness man, and induced Carpophorus to establish 
in the Piscina Publica, or Fish-market, a bank, of 
which he was the cashier and general manager. 
He gathered in much treasure belonging chiefly 
to Christians, and largely to widows and orphans 
among them. They felt very safe about their 
deposits, for they had unlimited confidence in 
Carpophorus, whose character was above reproach, 
and, as Callistus did business under his patronage 
and authority, they doubtless felt that their means 
were in as safe a keeping as can be found in this 
world, where even the heavy gold seems so often 
suddenly to develop wings and fly away as an 
eagle toward heaven. 

Whether Callistus gambled, or drove fast horses, 



40 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

or invested too heavily in real estate during some 
" boom " of those old times, we have no means of 
ascertaining; but after a time, to the dismay of 
the depositors, the bank failed. They very natu- 
rally appealed to Carpophorus, who, it turned 
out, had himself been a heavy loser. He imme- 
diately proceeds to call Callistus to account. This 
nimble saint, however, has not allowed the grass 
to grow under his heels, and Carpophorus is not 
able to come up with him till he is in the act of 
fleeing the country. He is on a ship in the harbor 
of Rome, by Portus Romanus, at the mouth of 
the Tiber. But it seems that the wind would not 
blow to suit Callistus, though he was to be a pope, 
and before the ship by which he proposed to take 
a foreign tour got under sail, lo and behold! his 
master is seen rowing rapidly in his direction. 
What shall he do? He has to decide quickly, 
for presently his outraged and too confiding 
master will be on board. His mind is soon made 
up, and over the side he goes, and we behold this 
saintly personage attempting suicide. 

But in this decision he was lacking in that in- 
fallibility which he was afterward to acquire. The 
sailors rescued him. Hippolytus tells us that the 
ferryman, whose boat was in the middle of the 
river, was slow, and adds, " But the sailors leaped 
into the boats, and drew him out, unwilling to 
come, while those on shore were raising a loud 



TWO SPECIMENS OF INFALLIBILITY 41 

cry." * The result was that the dripping rascal 
was soon in the hands of his master. Carpoph- 
orus, on bringing the culprit home, subjected him 
to a punishment which was both humiliating and 
severe. The " Napoleon of finance " was put to 
work in the pistrinum, or domestic tread- mill, 
in the house of Carpophorus. 

Subsequently Callistus was found guilty of an- 
other crime. " He hurried on their Sabbath to the 
synagogue of the Jews, who were congregated 
there, and created a disturbance among them." 
The disorderly conduct was of so serious a nature 
that he was arrested and arraigned before the pre- 
fect of the city, Fuscianus.f Not only the Jews, 

* It requires no violation of probability to imagine that Car- 
pophorus, once the favorite freedman of Marcus Aurelius, and 
now a wealthy officer of the imperial household, speeding in his 
chariot out of the Porta Portuensis and over the fifteen miles to 
Portus, goes first to the home of the pastor of the Christian 
church (as he himself was a Christian and the fugitive a nominal 
one), and thence in company with him hastens to the piers, where 
he learns that Callistus has embarked. The description of the 
exciting scene of the arrest indicates that the narrator was a wit- 
ness of it. The slowness of the ferryman, the plunge of Callis- 
tus, the quickness of the sailors, and the unwillingness of the 
rescued to be drawn out, together with the "loud cry" from 
those on the shore, are all touches which indicate that the writer 
heard and saw what he tells of. 

t C. Allius Fuscianus became prefect of Rome probably on the 
death of Aufidius Victorinus, who was made prefect in 183 and 
died in 185. Fuscianus entered on his second consulship in 188. 
Marcia, who was at this time all-powerful with Commodus, hav- 
ing all the honors of an empress, except that of having the sacred 



42 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

but his own master, Carpophorus, testified against 
him on this occasion. 

It would seem as if he had made the plea that 
the Jews had accused him because he was a 
Christian, and had endeavored to make out that 
it was a case of religious persecution. Carpopho- 
rus assured Fuscianus that he was " no Christian 
[i.e., no true Christian], having made away with 
a great sum of money of mine, as I will prove." 
He was scourged and then sent as a convict to a 
mine in Sardinia. He was not a sufferer for his 
Christian faith, as was Hippolytus himself after- 
ward in the same island, but was sent there as a 
criminaV 

fire borne before her, seems to have obtained relief for the Chris- 
tians exiled and treated as convicts in Sardinia in the year 1 86. 
This helps to fix the dates of the occurrences referred to with 
tolerable accuracy. 






IV 
A CALM FOR THE CHRISTIANS 



43 



IV 

A CALM FOR THE CHRISTIANS 

THIS was a time of quiet in the church, a calm 
between terrible storms; and the Christians in 
the city of Rome seem to have been specially- 
favored. 

There had been dreadful persecutions in the 
reign of Marcus Aurelius, but now Commodus 
was on the throne and there was peace. This is 
one of the riddles of history, for Marcus Aurelius, 
the philosopher, stands among the first of the 
Roman emperors for high intelligence, probity, 
and kindliness. Yet under him it is probable 
that the Christians suffered more severely than 
under any of his predecessors, at least in the 
provinces. 

Commodus, his son, is described as one of the 
worst of men, inheriting none of the virtues of 
his noble father, but in a very large measure the 
vices of his wicked mother, Faustina. He seems 
to have been sensual, heartless, and cruel. It is 
said that his accession to the throne (A.D. 180) 
45 



46 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

was the signal for a series of cruelties, " rivaling, 
if not surpassing, those of Nero and Caligula." 
He seemed to gloat on scenes of blood. 

Could we have joined the mighty throngs surg- 
ing amid the temples and monuments and palaces 
of Rome on the day of some noted contest in the 
arena, we should have seen strange sights in those 
times. Passing through the Roman Forum and 
along streets where on every hand were the most 
splendid edifices and works of art, the chefs- 
d'oeuvres of the greatest masters, gathered from 
the collections of conquered cities, we would have 
seen looming up before us, as we drifted with the 
human tide, a building which by its grandeur 
dwarfed all the rest. As we approach the Colos- 
seum, that vastest of theaters, and stand in some- 
thing like awe as we try to take in its dimensions, 
the crowd parts and it is whispered that the 
emperor is coming. Amid the plaudits of the 
thoughtless multitude the splendid chariot of the 
youthful heir of Marcus Aurelius drives at full 
speed, for he is reckless and careless of trampling 
down those who are too slow to make way. He 
alights, but, strange to say, does not mount the 
steps to the emperor's box on the podium. He 
turns to the arena, and as the ninety thousand 
spectators that line the tiers, rising one above the 
other till they reach nearly to the top of the great 
walls, hail him as Hercules, is armed by his at- 



A CALM FOR THE CHRISTIANS 47 

tendants for the combat. Tiger after tiger and 
lion after lion are let loose to bound upon him, 
only to fall by the resistless weapons which he 
wields.* 

Presently this grows too tame. The blood of 
mere beasts will not appease his passion for kill- 
ing. Men must be sacrificed to amuse him and 
help him make a Roman holiday. The mightiest 
men come forth, gladiators trained from their 
youth for sanguinary contests. One after another 
sinks under his blows until the greed of this mon- 
ster in human form is glutted, and his imperial 
arm is weary taking human life, his choicest 
pastime. 

Now, one would think, there would be persecu- 
tions more terrible than those of Nero and Domi- 
tian. His father, Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic, with 
rare self-command and dignity, seemed to make 

* " To surprise them [the wild beasts] in their solitary haunts, 
and to transport them to Rome that they might be slain in pomp 
by the hand of an emperor, was an enterprise equally ridiculous 
for the prince and oppressive for the people. . . . 

" He styled himself [as we still read on his medals] ' the 
Roman Hercules.' . . . 

"A panther was let loose, and the archer waited till he had 
leaped on a trembling malefactor. In the same instant the shaft 
flew ; the beast dropped dead and the man remained unhurt. The 
door of the amphitheater disgorged at one time a hundred lions ; 
a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them 
dead, as they ran raging around the arena. Neither the huge 
bulk of the elephant nor the scaly hide of the rhinoceros could 
defend them from his stroke " (Gibbon, vol. i., p. 160). 



48 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

it his aim in self-discipline to curb and conquer 
what is cruel and ignoble in our nature : 

" To let the ape and tiger die, 
And let the man be more and more." 

He was a man such as few ages have produced 
in moral strength and nobility of character, one 
of the finest products of that philosophy which 
he professed, and this in spite of physical weak- 
ness and suffering. Commodus, with the strength 
of a Goliath, seems to have combined the fierce- 
ness of the tiger with the fatuity of the ape. 
Cruel contests in the arena and disgraceful de- 
baucheries and bloody tragedies in the palace 
occupied his time and his energies, while he left 
the affairs of the empire in a large degree to freed- 
men and sycophants.* 

Yet under the noble father much Christian 
blood flowed, and under the despicable son there 
was peace and quietness. How this came about 
we may never be able fully to explain ; but Hip- 
polytus tells us of some facts which make it prob- 
able that the relief from persecution in the reign 
of Commodus was due, at least in part, to the in- 
fluence of a person but for whose presence in the 
palace of Caesar Callistus would never have been 
Bishop of Rome and would never have had his 

* Of him and other emperors, Gibbon says, " Secure of im- 
punity, careless of censure, they lived without restraint in the 
patient and humble society of their slaves and parasites." 



A CALM FOR THE CHRISTIANS 49 

name enrolled in the catalogues of the popes and 
the calendar of the saints. Marcia, the favorite 
concubine of Commodus, bore some relationship 
to the Christians. It would seem to indicate a 
very low grade of moral sentiment in the church 
in Rome at this time if she was a member of it. 
Yet this seems to be implied in what Hippolytus 
says of her, unless, as some think, his words are 
ironical ; and it cannot be considered greatly out 
of keeping with other facts on which he throws a 
surprising light. However this may have been, 
the influence of this woman probably stayed the 
arm of the bloody tyrant and trifler from descend- 
ing on the Christians in the empire. 

This may be inferred, for instance, from what 
Hippolytus says of the liberation of Callistus : 

" Some time after, Marcia, wishing to do a good 
work, sent for Victor [then Bishop of Rome] and 
asked what Christians had been transported to 
Sardinia, adding that she would ask the emperor 
to release them ; but, being a judicious and right- 
eous man, he omitted the name of Callistus, 
knowing the offense he had committed. 

" Marcia obtained the letter of pardon, and 
Hyacinthus,* a eunuch [of the service of the 
palace undoubtedly] and a presbyter [of the 
church], was despatched to the governor of the 
island to claim and bring back the martyrs. 
* Hyacinthus was the foster-father of Marcia. 



50 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

Hyacinthus delivered his list, and Callistus, find- 
ing that his name was not upon it, began to 
lament and entreat, and at last moved Hyacinthus 
to demand his liberation also." 

So Callistus, the convict, comes back to the 
scene of his former exploits to perform others, 
which, though not at all more meritorious than 
those which sent him a convict to Sardinia, were 
to elevate him to the bishopric in Rome and to a 
place in the calendar of the saints. 

When he came back to Rome Victor was 
greatly troubled in view of the scandal which his 
presence would bring on the church ; but, " being 
a good-natured man," instead of excommunicat- 
ing him, he only insisted that he should leave the 
city and live at Antium. 



V 
THE BANKER MADE A BISHOP 



5i 



THE BANKER MADE A BISHOP 

In the year A.D. 197 Victor died, and Callistus 
came back to Rome again. Zephyrinus became 
bishop. Callistus gained great influence over 
him, as we have already seen. He received from 
Zephyrinus an appointment, a remarkable me- 
morial of which still exists in Rome. He was 
placed in charge of " the cemetery " (beautiful 
name, " sleeping-place ") where the bodies of 
Christians who had " fallen asleep " were laid 
away to await the call of Him of whom the proc- 
lamation has been made, " Behold, He cometh 
with clouds, and every eye shall see Him," and 
also, " All them that sleep in Jesus will God bring 
with Him." 

It seems quite probable that the catacomb of 
St. Calixtus is the same " cemetery " which was 
used by the Christians at the end of the second 
century. There is still a pagan tomb of the 
second century at the entrance to this catacomb, 
indicating that it was in existence in the days of 
53 



54 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

Zephyrinus and Callistus, and its interior has been 
found to be rich in inscriptions, frescos, and other 
relics of early Christianity. 

The combination of avarice and illiteracy in 
Zephyrinus seems to have suited well the aims 
and purposes of Callistus. He had long to wait 
before he could obtain full possession of the ob- 
ject of his ambition, for Zephyrinus occupied the 
seat he coveted for twenty years ( 1 97-2 1 7). Yet 
Callistus seems to have wielded the power of the 
position without bearing its responsibilities. Tak- 
ing advantage of the ignorance and venality of 
Zephyrinus, he seems to have used him as an 
automaton through whose hands he played his 
own game and gained his own ends. 

This was a sad time for Christianity, in spite 
of the freedom from persecution ; for Zephyrinus 
was the weak tool of Callistus, the wicked schemer 
and active promoter of heresy. 

When Zephyrinus died, in 217, Callistus, hav- 
ing doubtless thoroughly arranged everything 
beforehand for this even$, and standing by in ex- 
pectancy, vaulted into the empty seat. The bad 
banker was now a bishop. 

What sort of a bishop will he make ? Bad men 
have become good through divine grace. It is 
the glory of the Christian religion that it lifts men 
from the lowest depths of degradation to the 
loftiest and purest heights of true nobility. But 



THE BANKER MADE A BISHOP 55 

when a man has lived for a large part of a lifetime 
as a professing Christian, and has all along not 
only been guilty of foibles and weaknesses, but 
has systematically formed and carried out wicked 
and selfish designs, we can have but little hope 
that any position of responsibility to which he 
may attain will work any great change for the 
better in his character. In such a case we need 
not expect such a transformation as is said to 
have taken place when the wild, roistering Prince 
Hal became Henry V. 

Let us see what a neighboring bishop has to 
say of Callistus after he has been elevated to the 
bishopric. Our friends of the Church of Rome 
would have us believe (especially since 1870) that 
he was now a pope with universal and infallible 
authority. Of course, then, we should expect 
that all other bishops, and especially those whose 
lives were such as to gain them the crown of 
sainthood, would be found bowing before this 
universal father and potentate with all possible 
humility, and ready to obey every mandate with- 
out a whisper of dissent or protest. 

What did Hippolytus think of " Pope " Callis- 
tus? Here is what he says : " He was indeed an 
impostor and a villain [navovpyog], and in the end 
drew many after him." This surely cannot be a 
pope of whom a Roman saint and bishop thus 
speaks ! 



56 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

So much for the character of Callistus; but 
what of his theology? Hippolytus was a good 
judge of this. He was a worthy forerunner of 
Athanasius in the great contest against those of 
every shade of opinion who taught false views 
concerning the person of Christ and the doctrine 
of the Trinity. Hear what he says of this man 
who was, according to the present teaching of 
Romanists, the infallible teacher of the church : 
" Callistus took the lead in propagating this 
heresy, and devised certain additions to the im- 
piety of the doctrine [i.e., Noetianism]." 

Cardinal Gibbons says:* "What, then, is the 
real doctrine of infallibility ? It simply means that 
the pope, as successor to St. Peter, Prince of the 
Apostles, by virtue of the promises of Jesus Christ 
is preserved from error of judgment when he pro- 
mulgates to the church a decision on faith or 
morals." 

Now it must be remembered that Callistus is 
one of the so-called successors of St. Peter. After 
him several other popes were named, and he is 
thus an honored link of that unbroken chain of 
infallible teachers, every link of which was stamped 
"infallible" by the Vatican Council in 1870. 
How poorly the facts revealed by the search-light 
of Hippolytus agree with the dogma of infallibil- 
ity, as thus denned by this notable exponent of 

* " Faith of our Fathers," chap x. 



THE BANKER MADE A BISHOP 57 

Romanism, we have seen and shall see yet more 
clearly. 

Hear Hippolytus again : " The infatuated and 
tricky fellow, who pours forth blasphemy wher- 
ever he goes, . . . and is not ashamed at one 
time to fall into the dogma of Sabellius, and at 
another that of Theodotus." Theodotus denied 
the divinity of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and Sa- 
bellius, as is well known, the true doctrine of the 
Trinity. 

Is this an infallible pope, who " is preserved 
from error of judgment when he promulgates 
to the church a decision on faith or morals"? 
Strange light is this which our saint with his 
search-light sheds on the fabled " chair of Peter " ! 



VI 



POPES (?) AND PRESBYTERS 



59 



VI 

POPES (?) AND PRESBYTERS 

While this manner of speaking on the part of 
Hippolytus shows clearly that Callistus was not, 
as is claimed by the Roman Catholic Church, a 
pope with universal and infallible authority, the 
same thing is made perfectly clear by the account 
that Hippolytus gives us of a trial for heresy. It 
was a cause ce fibre. 

The person charged with heresy was no other 
than that Noetus whose theory of the Trinity 
Callistus adopted, adding " to the impiety of the 
doctrine." Is the trial according to the papal 
system? Let us see. Hippolytus tells us: 
" When the blessed presbyters \inakarioi presbn- 
teroi] heard this, they summoned him [Noetus] 
before the assembly and examined him. But he 
denied at first that he held such opinions ; after- 
ward, however, taking shelter among some, and 
having gathered round him some others who had 
embraced the same error, he wished thereafter to 
uphold his dogma openly as correct. And the 
61 



62 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

blessed presbyters called him again before them 
and examined him. But he stood out against 
them, saying, .... And the presbyters replied, 
.... Then, after examining him, they expelled 
him from the church, and he was carried to such 
a pitch of pride that he established a school." * 

This school, in which Noetianism, alias Patri- 
passianism, was taught, survived and was made 
very influential under Callistus, who made it ex- 
ceedingly popular by adding the doctrine of " free 
love," as we shall presently see. 

Does not this show that trials were conducted 
by presbyters sitting as a court ? Is not this very 
much like a presbytery? Tayler remarks that 
already " the fine gold was dimmed." It was in- 
deed. But here we find no pope to make an au- 
thoritative decision, but a body of presbyters. 
Precisely in keeping with this representation of 
the mode of ecclesiastical procedure in Rome in 
the days of Hippolytus is what he says in another 
place, where Zephyrinus is represented not as the 
occupant of a papal throne, but as a member of 
the assembly of presbyters. In this passage f 
he says, " Callistus, putting Zephyrinus forward 
in the assembly, persuaded him to say," etc. 

Here we have a vivid picture of the great 
struggle which Hippolytus had with these here- 

* Hippolytus against the heresy of one Noetus. 
\ " Refutation," book ix., chap. vi. 



POPES (?) y4ND PRESBYTERS 63 

tics, and this is the occasion on which Zephyri- 
nus, manipulated by Callistus, charges Hippolytus 
with being a " ditheist." 

As we read we find that the latter is upholding 
the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as taught a 
hundred years later by Athanasius, and Callistus 
is denying the existence of three persons in the 
Godhead. 

We find that when Callistus was charged with 
teaching that the Father suffered, and upheld 
what has been called Patripassianism, he would 
recoil and go to the opposite extreme of denying 
the divinity of Christ, as Theodotus, who was ex- 
communicated in the time of Victor, had done. 
In the words of Hippolytus, " Callistus at one 
time branches off to the opinion of Noetus, but 
at another into that of Theodotus, and holds no 
sure doctrine."* 

Thus we find Hippolytus carrying out his in- 
tention (expressed in book ix., chap, i.) " to fur- 
nish an account and refutation of those heresies 
that have sprang up in our day, by which certain 
ignorant and presumptuous men have attempted 
to scatter abroad the church, and have introduced 
the greatest confusions among all the faithful 
throughout the entire world." 

If Callistus and Zephyrinus were popes with 
infallibility and universal authority, what are we 

* " Refutation," book x., chap, xxiii. 



64 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

to think of Hippolytus and Athanasius and all 
the orthodox condemnations of Patripassianism 
and Socinianism ? 

Yet Callistus (Calixtus I.) is in all the cata- 
logues as a pope, and in the Breviary at his name 
the remark is appended, " Maxima veneratione 
colitur " (" He is worshiped with the greatest 
veneration "). 

In the light which Hippolytus sheds on the 
contest in the assembly, and in all that he says 
of these wicked and blasphemous heresies, is it 
possible to conceive an absurdity which excels 
that of the claims of the Roman Catholic Church? 



VII 
THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY 



65 



VII 

"THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY" 

THUS we see how Hippolytus, in the words 
of Dr. Schaff, " stands out an irrefutable witness 
against the claims of an infallible papacy, which 
was entirely unknown in the third century." 

It is quite plain that, if Zephyrinus and Callis- 
tus were popes, Hippolytus, who surely ought to 
have known it, was entirely ignorant of the fact. 
Yet what he tells us of another phase of the ad- 
ministration of Callistus shows us that he pre- 
tended to grant something very much like the 
indulgences of later times, and we find that this 
dreadful wickedness aroused indignation and 
called forth protests no less earnest and decided 
than it did in the sixteenth century. Hippolytus 
was not only the Athanasius, but the Luther, of 
his time. He is as earnest in opposing Zephyrinus 
and Callistus in the year 200 as was Luther against 
Leo and Tetzel thirteen centuries later. 

Though the papacy was not established at this 

time, it is easy to see that the germs of the ini- 

quitotis system were developing. " The mystery 

of iniquity," which existed even in Paul's day, 

67 



68 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

and did " already work," was now growing strong 
and bold. Indeed, it would seem that the theory 
was not now in an early stage of evolution, but 
had sprung full armed and equipped from the 
fertile brain of this saint who is still invoked and 
adored at the altars of Romanism in every land 
on the fourteenth day of October. 

Hippolytus goes on to inform us that Callistus, 
by the promise that he would forgive sins, en- 
couraged fornication, nameless crimes of lust and 
uncleanness, and even abortion ; allowing the rich 
to revel in debauchery, and yet providing rules 
by which they might still remain in good and 
regular standing in the church ; allowing all to 
come to the communion, and wresting the Scrip- 
tures to justify his course. Hippolytus exclaims : 
" See to what a pitch of impiety this lawless one 
[atiopios] proceeded, teaching fornication and 
murder at the same time! Yet, in the face of 
all these enormities, these men are lost to all sense 
of shame and presume to call themselves the 
Catholic Church."* 

* Tertullian (" De Pudicitia," $i) says, in fine scorn of the 
pretensions of Zephyrinus or Callistus : " I learn that an edict has 
been given, even a peremptory edict. The sovereign pontiff 
[pontifex maximus~\, that is, the bishop of bishops, has said: ' I 
remit the sins of impurity and fornication to those who do pen- 
ance.' O edict! not less can be done, then, than to ticket it, 
'Good work.' But where shall such an edict be posted? Surely, 
I think, upon the doors of the houses of prostitution." 



"THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY" 69 

Here we see plainly the beginnings of that long 
series of pretensions and usurpations of power on 
the part of a bishop of Rome which finally de- 
veloped, in A.D. 607, into the full-blown papacy, 
when the decree of Phocas compelled the sub- 
mission of other bishops to the Roman see, and 
the bishops of Rome became popes. But there 
is not the slightest indication that Hippolytus felt 
that it was his duty to yield obedience to Zephy- 
rinus or Callistus. 



VIII 
CALLISTUS AND THE CALLISTIANS 



7i 



VIII 

CALLISTUS AND THE CALLISTIANS 

It is perfectly clear that Hippolytus, so far 
from acknowledging Callistus as the infallible 
head of the church universal, indicted him as an 
arch-heretic, and it is equally clear that this ac- 
cusation does not apply only to his career before 
he reached the coveted episcopate, but more es- 
pecially to his acts and utterances while in that 
position. He was not only guilty of these things 
while he was operating his automaton, Zephyri- 
nus, but more flagrantly after he is supposed to 
have become infallible. 

What less than this can be the meaning of such 
an expression as this ? " It was from Callistus 
his scholars took their appellation, Callistians, so 
called on account of him who was their leader." 
That Callistus was not the acknowledged head 
and teacher of the church universal, but a design- 
ing sectary and a base corrupter of morals, is 
perfectly clear. 

The thought that he owed him obedience has 
evidently never suggested itself to Hippolytus. 
73 



74 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

On the other hand, he feels that it is his bounden 
duty to expose his errors and oppose his wicked 
designs. Hippolytus, though calling himself a 
presbyter, reckons himself in the true sense " a 
successor* of the apostles and guardian of the 
doctrine of the church," and he acts accordingly. 
He tells us: 

" The impostor Callistus, having ventured on 
such opinions, established a school of theology in 
ANTAGONISM f to the church, adopting the fore- 
going system of instruction. And he first in- 
vented the device of conniving with men in their 
sensual pleasures, saying that all had their sins 
forgiven by himself. For he who is in the habit 
of attending the congregation of any one else, and 
is called a Christian, should he commit any trans- 
gression, the sin, they say, is not reckoned to 
him, provided only he hurries off and attaches 
himself to the school of Callistus. And many 
persons were gratified with his regulations, as 
being stricken in conscience, and at the same time 
having been rejected for various heresies, while, 
also, some of them, in accordance with our con- 
demnatory sentence, had been by us forcibly 
ejected from the church." £ This looks much 
more as if Callistus were pastor of a church — per- 
haps the oldest church — in Rome, and Hippolytus 

* " Refutation," book i., introduction, 
t Ibid., book ix., chap. vii. \ Ibid. 



CALLISTUS AND THE CALLISTIANS 75 

of another, than as if Callistus were pope, or even 
diocesan bishop. Hippolytus continues: "Now 
such disciples as these passed over to these fol- 
lowers of Callistus, and served to crowd his school." 
And again: "This one propounded the opin- 
ion that if a bishop was guilty of any sin, if 
even a sin unto death, he ought not to be de- 
posed. * . . . And the hearers of Callistus, being 
delighted with his tenet, continue with him, thus 
mocking [deceiving] themselves, as well as many 
others, and crowds of these dupes flock into his 
school. Wherefore also his pupils are multiplied, 
and they plume themselves upon the crowds 
[attending the school] for the sake of pleasures 
which Christ did not permit. But, in contempt 
of Him, they place restraint on the commission 
of no sin, alleging that they pardon those who ac- 
quiesce [in Callistus's opinions]." Then is given 
an account of criminal and unnatural practices 

* " Whosoever shall affirm that the Holy Spirit is not given by 
ordination, and therefore that bishops say in vain, ' Receive ye 
the Holy Ghost,' or that thereby a charade)- is not impressed, or 
that he who was once a priest may become a layman again, let 
him be accursed" (sessio xxiii., caput iv., canon 4, Decrees of 
Council of Trent). 

"... Of this the faithful are frequently to be reminded in 
order to be convinced that, were even the lives of her ministers 
debased by crime, they are still within her pale, and therefore lose 
no part of the power with whieh her ministry invests them " 
(ninth article of creed, Catechism of the Council of Trent, 
Donovan's translation, published by command of Pope Pius V.). 



76 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HJPPOLYTUS 

which is deemed unsuitable for quotation, show- 
ing such a state of morals in the Christian church 
as makes one shudder to think of. And these 
things were encouraged by Callistus. What is the 
conclusion from all this, from which it is a relief 
to turn away as from an unbearable stench? 

It would seem that, for all who are not so in- 
cased in prejudice as to be absolutely inaccessible 
to argument, these facts are sufficient to over- 
throw the dogma of an infallible papacy. They 
show plainly that there was at this time, at which 
it is claimed that an infallible pontiff occupied a 
papal throne, no such person in existence, and 
that the wicked bishop Callistus, instead of being 
the acknowledged head of the universal church, 
was a sectary, leading his followers, in despite and 
contempt of the authority of the church, into the 
wildest heresy and the most infamous antinomi- 
anism. And Rome cannot gainsay these facts, 
for they are presented by one whom she has 
sainted, and against whose truthfulness it would 
be impiety for her to utter a syllable. 

Thus we see that the dogma of infallibility is 
an absurdity, and, moreover, that the so-called 
chair of St. Peter is a mere figment of a designing 
ecclesiasticism. Ah, how our poor world has bled 
and groaned under the delusion! Millions have 
shuddered at the thought of this mighty power 
to punish eternally any opposition to its behests. 



CALLISTUS AND THE CALUSTIANS 77 

It is clear that the chain of infallible authority- 
supposed to lead back to the chair of St. Peter 
has many missing links. The search-light of 
Hippolytus reveals its non-existence, in his times 
at least. As, in the clear radiance thrown on 
this dark passage, we follow along the track where 
this chain was said to lie, and find that it is not 
there, the plain inference is that it is missing all 
the way back to its pretended source, the chair 
of Peter. Hippolytus has evidently never heard 
of Peter as primate and of popes as his infallible 
successors. Evidently, then, there is no chain 
and there is no chair of universal and infallible 
authority. They were manufactured in the papal 
workshop after the days of Hippolytus. 

Thus the " Refutation of all Heresies," while 
intended for the refutation of the heresies of those 
early times, refutes also, by the facts which it 
lays bare, that which has been the arch-heresy of 
the Christian era, the infallibility and supremacy 
of the popes.* Could this but be universally 

* It has been well said that " by the bull ' ineffabilis ' that pontiff 
[Pius IX.] has retrospectively clothed the definitions of Zephy- 
rinns and Callistus with infallibility, thus making himself partaker 
in their heresies " (" Ante-Nicene Fathers," vol. v., p. 159). 

Cardinal Gibbons would evidently claim infallibility for the 
same "definitions." He says: "The Council of the Vatican, 
in promulgating in 1870 the pope's infallibility, did not create a 
new doctrine, but confirmed an old one. In proclaiming this 
dogma, the church enforces as a law a principle which has always 
existed as a matter of fact" (" Faith of our Fathers," chap. xi.). 



78 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

known and fully understood in all its bearings, 
what fetters would be broken, what darkness 
would be dispelled! The power of Rome to de- 
lude and torture and destroy would be taken 
away if all could but hear and fully comprehend 
the words of Hippolytus. 

Then we would say, as we look at this old 
statue, O mute marble lips, may it soon be true of 
you, as of the silent heavens, " There is no language 
nor speech; their voice is not heard;" yet "their 
sound is gone out into all the earth, and their 
words to the end of the world." 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST 



79 



IX 

THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST 

THE " good seed " requires " good ground " 
and careful culture for its full development; but 
ill weeds grow apace without any effort or care. 
This Noetian-antinomian heresy of Callistus grew 
and spread after his death in A.D. 222, the year 
in which the good emperor Alexander Severus 
ascended the throne. Shakespeare has said most 
truly : 

" The evil that men do lives after them." * 

Oh, that it, instead of the good, could be "in- 
terred with their bones " ! 

It is not strange that multitudes had crowded 
to the school of Callistus which he had " estab- 
lished in antagonism to the church." It was 
a very pleasant thing for those who wished 
to live in the indulgence of "pleasures which 
Christ did not permit " to be informed that this 
made no serious difference ; that, though Bishop 
Hippolytus and the bishops of other congrega- 

* "Julius Csesar," act iii., sc. 2. 
81 



82 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

tions in the city were so strait-laced and old- 
fashioned as to exclude them as unfit to be 
church-members, there was one Bishop Callistus, 
who would readily forgive their offenses if they 
would but attend his new theological school. 
Here there was some scope for breadth and ad- 
vanced thought. The disagreeable features of 
the teachings of Christ and the apostles were 
there smoothed down or eliminated, and a pleas- 
ing liberalism had taken the place of a crabbed, 
strict orthodoxy in doctrine and a purely biblical 
rule of life. Callistianism quite naturally acquired 
a wide-spread popularity, like Mohammedanism 
four hundred years later, and Mormonism in our 
own century, though the scale on which it oper- 
ated was more contracted than that of Moham- 
medanism by reason of the true Christianity which 
surrounded it, and largely through the energy and 
determined opposition of Hippolytus and his 
fellow-pastors in Rome. 

We have already seen how the " blessed pres- 
byters " began to wrestle with the error at first 
in order to throttle it in its birth by excluding 
Noetus of Smyrna, its originator, from the church. 
But the wily and able Callistus eluded their vigi- 
lance and defied their authority, as he had the 
crowd, doubtless, of the worldly and the rich at 
his back, and, instead of being deposed, was 
made a "saint." His invention of a "second 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST 83 

baptism," by which it was claimed that all sins 
were washed away, became specially popular, it 
seems ; for nothing so pleases those who wish to 
live in sin and yet be saved, as an arrangement of 
this sort. To such, one work which they can 
perform or external ordinance which can be ad- 
ministered to them is more highly prized than all 
the truths of Scripture and all the " exceeding 
great and precious promises " of the gospel. The 
definite "work done" {opus operatum) is a 
soothing salve for the wounded conscience much 
sought after by Christians of this stamp, and the 
second baptism of Callistus was just the thing to 
meet the popular demands of the unspiritual. It 
was " too good a thing " to be allowed to die 
with its originator. The antinomianism of Callis- 
tus lived after him and gained new vigor. First 
connected with Noetianism by him, it formed a 
copartnership after his death with another of the 
fantastic heresies of the time. 

Hippolytus gives us the sequel of this heretical 
movement in the seventh and eighth chapters of 
the ninth book of the " Refutation." He had 
struggled for twenty years with Zephyrinus and 
Callistus united, and then with Callistus invested 
with new authority, for five more, against errors 
that threatened to destroy the very life of the 
church and cover with reproach the very name 
of Christian. Now he was becoming Hippolytus 



84 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

the aged, but he must continue the battle. He 
and Callistus were, as he tells us, " of the same 
age." The latter must, then, have been about 
seventy when he died in 222. Hippolytus, now 
under the burden of threescore years and ten, 
must gird on his armor again, for the battle is 
about to wax hotter than ever. A new and 
formidable foe appears on the scene, one Alcibia- 
des, who broached a heresy founded on a pre- 
tended revelation called the " Book of Elchasai." 
But let Hippolytus tell the story : 

" The doctrine of this one [Callistus] having 
been noised abroad throughout the entire world, 
a cunning man and full of desperation, one called 
Alcibiades, dwelling in Apamaea, [a city] of Syria, 
examined carefully into this business. And, 
considering himself a more formidable character, 
and more ingenious in such tricks than Callistus, 
he repaired to Rome; and he brought thither 
some book, alleging that a certain just man, El- 
chasai, had received this from Serae, a town of 
Parthia, and that he gave it to one called Sobiai. 
[He alleged] that it had been revealed by an angel 
whose height was twenty-four schoenoi, which 
make ninety-six miles," etc. 

Alcibiades represented that Elchasai's " new 
remission of sins " had been preached as early as 
" the third year of Trajan." Hippolytus contin- 
ues: " And [Elchasai] determines [the nature of] 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE UN FITTEST 85 

baptism, and even this I shall explain. He alleges 
[as regards] those who have been involved in 
every species of lasciviousness and filthiness and 
[in] acts of wickedness, if only any [of them] be 
a believer, that he determines that such an one, 
on being converted * and obeying the book [of 
Elchasai], should by baptism receive remission 
of sins. He, however, ventured on these knaver- 
ies, taking occasion from the aforesaid tenet of 
zv/iic/i Callistus stood fonvard as a cliampion. 

" For, perceiving that many were delighted 
with this kind of a promise, he considered that 
he could opportunely make the attempt [just 
alluded to]. 

" Notwithstanding, we offered opposition to 
this [heretic] and did not permit many for any 
length of time to become victims of the delusion. 

" For we carried conviction [to the people when 
we affirmed] that this was the operation of a 
spurious spirit and the invention of a heart inflated 
with pride, and that this [heretic], like a wolf, had 
risen up against many wandering sheep which 
Callistus by his [arts of] deception had scattered 
abroad." 

Of this leader of the Elchasaites, or advanced 
Callistians, Hippolytus tells us : " To those, then, 

* This "conversion" evidently was the acceptance of Elcha- 
saism, and had nothing to do with a turning from sin to righteous- 
ness. 



86 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

that have been orally instructed by him he dis- 
penses baptism in this manner, addressing to his 
dupes some such words as the following: 

" ' If, therefore, one shall ' " — here are named 
crimes of the lowest conceivable nature, unsuita- 
ble even to mention, — " ' and is desirous of ob- 
taining forgiveness of sins, from the moment that 
he hearkens to this book [of Elchasai] let him be 
baptized a second time in the name of the great 
and most high God, and in the name of His Son, 
the mighty King, and by baptism let him be puri- 
fied and cleansed, and let him adjure for himself 
these seven witnesses that have been described in 
this book — the heaven, and the water, and the 
holy spirits, and the angels of prayer, and the 
oil, and the salt, and the earth.' 

" These constitute the astonishing mysteries of 
Elchasai and those ineffable and potent secrets 
which he delivers to his deserving disciples."* 

Are the additions which the Roman Catholic 
Church has made to the simple baptism ordained 
by Christ survivals of Callistianism and Elchasa- 
ism ? Rome does, indeed, condemn a second 
baptism ; but the efficacy ascribed to the sacra- 
ment, the exorcism, the oil and the salt used in 
administering it, are very suggestive of Elchasai's 
rite, while the fact that baptism in both cases is 
called a mystery indicates in no uncertain way a 

* " Refutation of all Heresies," book ix., chap. x. 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNF1TTEST 87 

connection between what Hippolytus speaks of 
with disgust and righteous indignation and the 
Romish ordinance of the present day. 

Looking back at this old-time contest between 
antinomian heresy and true Christianity, one can 
hardly refrain from joining in the generous out- 
burst of the American editor of the works of Hip- 
polytus (Bishop A. C. Coxe) : 

" My soul be with Hippolytus when the great 
Judge holds His assize. His eulogy is in the 
psalm, ' Then stood up Phinehas, and executed 
judgment : and so the plague was stayed. And 
that was counted unto him for righteousness unto 
all generations forevermore.' "* 

* " Ante-Nicene Fathers," vol. v., p. 160. 



X 
TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET 



8 9 






TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET 

We would fain know more of this noble de- 
fender of the faith, but the baptism of fire which 
swept over the Christian church just after the 
usurpation of the imperial throne by the Gothic 
giant, Maximin the Thracian, seems to have 
destroyed almost all personal memorials of his 
career; but the statue in the marble chair attests 
the high esteem in which he was held. It pre- 
sents to us still a form most venerable for age 
and benign dignity, while the inscriptions upon 
the chair indicate his participation in the en- 
deavor to settle one of the controversies which 
for many years divided the church. These in- 
scriptions, as we have seen, also point to some 
of the many works in which he labored long to 
maintain and present to the church and the 
world the great truths of the Scriptures on other 
points of far greater importance than the timing 
of the Easter festival. 

Though he was threescore years and ten 
9 1 _ 



92 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

when the contest with Callistus ended with the 
death of the wicked bishop in 222, his work was 
not near its completion. In the thirteen or 
fourteen years that followed it is not improbable 
that much of his literary work, of which many 
fragments have come down to us, was done. It 
is certain that the great work which was begun 
in his student days, and was at first but a synop- 
sis of the lectures of his teacher, Irenaeus, was 
not completed till this period ; and in his " Chroni- 
cle " is recorded, in what was perhaps one of the 
last strokes of his prolific pen, the death of the 
good emperor Alexander Severus in A.D. 235. 

He wrote commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, 
Numbers, the Books of Samuel, the Psalms, 
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Canticles, the Greater 
Prophets, and Zechariah. That on Daniel, re- 
cently discovered, has already been referred to. 
He wrote commentaries on books of the New 
Testament too, and fragments of those on Mat- 
thew, Luke, and the Revelation still exist. He 
also wrote a defense of John's Gospel and of the 
Revelation. He was one of those to whom God 
had given " a banner, that it might be displayed 
because of the truth," and very nobly and cour- 
ageously did he display it. 

When Maximin the Thracian had compassed 
the deaths of Alexander and his noble mother, 
Mammaea, the guide of his youth, the next vie- 



TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET 93 

tims of his wrath were the Christians; for they 
had been favored by Alexander and were at- 
tached to him. 

In the emperor's youth Mammaea had sent for 
Origen to come to Antioch, and there listened to 
his instructions with great interest. In this privi- 
lege Alexander was doubtless a sharer. 

Eusebius tells us that Origen visited Rome * in 
the reign of Caracalla (21 1-2 17), and, strangely 
enough, Jerome notes the fact that one of the 
homilies of Hippolytus shows the presence of 
Origen when it was delivered. f These two great 
men, then, seem to have met when Alexander 
Severus was a youth. Is it not probable that 
they talked of the hopeful prospect that the 
future emperor would be a Christian and that 
the empire might be won for Christ ? We can- 
not know. But it is certain that when Alex- 

* According to Eusebius, this visit of Origen to Rome was 
during the episcopate of Zephyrinus. He says (" Hist. Eccl.," 
book vi., chap, xiv.): "Origen, . . . while Zephyrinus at this 
time was Bishop of the Church of Rome " (he does not intimate 
that this was the church universal), " says that he also came to 
Rome, being desirous to see the very ancient Church of Rome." 

t According to a great scholar (W. E. Tayler, " Hippolytus 
and the Church of the Third Century," p. 38), "History records 
that he [Hippolytus] was the first preacher of note in the Church 
of Rome." 

The opinion has been expressed by another equally distin- 
guished student of Christian biography, Dr. Salmon, that Origen 
probably received a great impetus in his brilliant course from 
Hippolytus. 



94 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

ander Severus, who was looked upon as the al- 
most Christian emperor, was slain that the 
altogether pagan giant, Maximin, might ascend 
the throne, Hippolytus was among the victims 
in the persecution which followed. 

There must have been much in common be- 
tween Hippolytus and the brilliant genius and 
untiring student, Origen. They were both great 
students of the Word of God, and it is probable 
that the ardent and enthusiastic younger scholar 
had not yet mingled with his teachings drawn 
from the Word of God those unorthodox views 
which came from the pagan philosophies of the 
day which Hippolytus so earnestly combats in 
his "Refutation." At this time Origen must 
have been engaged in the ardent pursuit of those 
studies for the more favorable prosecution of 
which he left Alexandria, the scene of his bril- 
liant success as a teacher in the school established 
by the great Clement of Alexandria, whom he 
succeeded when he was but eighteen years old, 
younger than most of his pupils. His enthusi- 
astic pursuit now was the study of Hebrew. He 
became the greatest living Hebraist, and his 
monumental work, the " Hexapla," — the Old 
Testament in six versions, arranged in parallel 
columns, — has been of incalculable help in ascer- 
taining and preserving a pure text of this part of 
the Word of God. Though so young, his great 



TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET 95 

celebrity, it seems, had induced Mammaea to 
seek his instructions in the truths of Christianity. 

On that occasion when Origen was a hearer of 
Hippolytus there must have been some commu- 
nion and interchange of thought between the two 
greatest Christians in the world, and it surely re- 
quires no great stretch of the imagination to pic- 
ture the younger and the older man leaving the 
house of God together, walking together along 
the streets of the splendid and wicked city of 
the Caesars, and then seeking some spot where 
they might be free from the noises of the streets 
and where they might sit and talk of all the won- 
derful things that God had done for them in the 
past, the struggles of the present, and the pros- 
pects of the future for that church which Christ 
died to save and for which they were willing to 
lay down their lives. 

If, leaving the thoroughfares of business, they 
should have gone up the Capitoline Hill, and have 
sat together under the Italian sky in some of the 
gardens about the splendid temples there, or on 
the steps of that Capitol from which the laws for 
the world-wide empire emanated, they would 
have found themselves in the center of a scene 
whose splendor has perhaps never been equaled. 
Near by them would be seen the temple of 
Jupiter Capitolinus, the central shrine of pagan 
worship. To it came the victorious generals as 



96 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

they returned from conquered nations and prov- 
inces to offer thanks and sacrifices and to enrich 
it with captured wealth and works of art. From 
this their eyes would naturally turn toward that 
point on the eastern boundary of the great city, 
where was the pretorian camp to which Paul was 
brought a prisoner, and where, though himself a 
captive, he led many a soldier captive in the 
sweet bonds of Christ's love, preaching to him 
the glorious gospel of Christ, as the guard and 
the prisoner lay chained together through the 
long watches of the night. North of them would 
be seen the whole length of the Flaminian Way, 
the finest street in Rome, running parallel to the 
modern Corso from the Capitoline Mount to the 
Flaminian Gate on the northern boundary, 
spanned by the triumphal arches of Claudius 
and of Marcus Aurelius. To the west of this 
lay the Campus Martius with all its objects of in- 
terest. Toward the setting sun would be seen 
the Flaminian Circus and the Portico of Octavius. 
Near the Pantheon would be seen that magnifi- 
cent bridge erected by Hadrian to lead to his 
mausoleum, which is still standing under the 
name of Castle of St. Angelo. A little west of 
south was the great Circus Maximus, capable of 
holding three hundred and eighty-five thousand 
spectators of the chariot-races. This helps us to 
form some idea of the size of the city of Rome. 



TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET gj 

On the southeast was the great Caelian Hill, 
covered with the palaces of men whose income 
was, in some cases, a large part of the tribute of 
a conquered province.* 

But the splendor of the Italian sky and of the 
imperial city would not long hold the gaze ol 
two such men in such a time. They might both 
look toward the Palatine bridge not far away, 
and then to the more distant Porta Portuensis, as 
this was the way to Portus Romanus, where 
Origen may have landed in coming to Rome, 
and where Hippolytus, as Bishop of the Nations, 
once exercised oversight for the Christian com- 
munity, which must have been a veritable 
" church of the strangers," as Christians from all 
nations under heaven would land there on their 
way to Rome. But no earthly sights or sounds 
could long occupy two minds so full of higher 
things. Both would naturally think of the terri- 
ble persecutions of Septimius Severus, which had 
ended with the emperor's death in 211. These 
persecutions had been especially severe in Alex- 
andria, the home of Origen's childhood and youth. 

The young man would naturally tell the older 
of that noble Christian father of his, Leonides, 
who, being one of the most prominent and de- 
voted among the Christians, was among the first 

* On the Rome of the period, see Lord's " Old Roman World " 
and Ginn's " Classical Atlas." 



98 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

to be seized in the Septimian persecution. He 
Would gladly have laid down his own life with 
that of his father, and everywhere proclaimed 
himself a Christian ; but the Lord had work for 
him, and he was not slain. His pupils were taken, 
and he did not hesitate to minister to them and 
to accompany them to the stake ; but when his 
father was arrested a stratagem dictated by a 
mother's love detained the enthusiastic and de- 
voted boy savant at home, and he could only 
write to his father urging him to be " faithful 
unto death." His best scholars were martyred, 
and he was stoned in the streets and continually 
in peril of his life ; but none of these things 
moved him. As soon as there was a lull in the 
tempest he went on teaching again. He could 
not help speaking to Hippolytus of scenes of 
such absorbing interest from which he had not 
long before come. Possibly, too, the memorable 
conferences with Mammaea and her noble boy 
had just taken place, and would afford matter of 
much interest to both talkers. 

Then Hippolytus might naturally be reminded 
of his own youth, and tell Origen of his great 
teacher, Irenaeus. What a wonderful teacher he 
was! How he clung to the Word of God in the 
Old and New Testaments at a time when the re- 
ligious atmosphere seems to have been so charged 
with heathen philosophies of one kind and an- 



77^0 GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET 99 

other that few could escape the influence of the 
spiritual malaria! But I think Hippolytus would 
have dwelt most lovingly on the personal remi- 
niscences which his teacher, who had gone to his 
rest some twelve or fifteen years before, must 
often have related to him of a teacher at whose 
feet he himself had sat in youth — Polycarp, the 
pupil of John, the beloved disciple of our Lord. 

Irenaeus, doubtless, often told Hippolytus, as 
we know he told Florinus, of the times when he 
was "yet but a boy." He must have spoken 
much more fully and freely to his beloved pupil, 
too, than he did to the latter. In writing to the 
erring Florinus, and in order to induce him to 
cleave to the truth, he speaks of Polycarp, whom 
Florinus had known, as follows : 

" For I remember the events of those times 
better than the events of recent occurrence, as the 
studies of our youth growing with our minds be- 
come one with them ; so that I can tell the very 
spot where the blessed Polycarp, being seated, 
used to discourse, his outgoings and his incomings, 
his manner of life, the form of his body, his con- 
versations with the people, and his familiar inter- 
course with John, as he was accustomed to tell, 
as also with the others who had seen the Lord. 
How, also, he used to relate their discourses and 
what things he had heard from them concerning 
the Lord ; also concerning His miracles and His 



IOO THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

doctrine. All these were told by Polycarp in 
consistency with Holy Scripture " (see how Ire- 
naeus speaks of the Gospels), " as he had received 
them from those who had been eye-witnesses of 
the life of the Word. These things, by the mercy 
of God and the opportunity then afforded me, I 
attentively heard, noting them down not on pa- 
per, but in my heart ; and these same facts I am 
always in the habit of recalling faithfully to mind."* 
Then Hippolytus would naturally come back 
from the golden past to the struggles of the pres- 
ent. Here in Rome the Christians highest in 
authority presented a great contrast to " that 
blessed and apostolic presbyter," Polycarp, as 
Irenaeus calls him in the same letter. At this 
time Zephyrinus and Callistus were in full career 
and the faithful and true were mourning. This 
was in the time of Caracalla, and, in spite of the 
fact that this emperor was so bloodthirsty as to 
slay twenty thousand at one time of those who 
had adhered to his brother Geta, and to cause a 
general slaughter of the inhabitants of Alexandria, 
it seems that the Christians were not persecuted. 
Elagabalus (or Heliogabalus), the fantastic, 
effeminate, and pleasure-loving youth who next 
wore the purple, the Sardanapalus of Rome, who 
was so reckless of human life and so destitute of 

* See letter to Florinus, preserved in Eusebius's " Hist. 
Eccl.," book v., chap. xx. 



TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET IOI 

respect for age or eminence that he is said to have 
invited the patricians of Rome to a banquet, and 
while they were at table had the doors opened to 
let in tigers and bears to tear them limb from 
limb, seems yet not to have disturbed the calm 
which the Christians enjoyed. The peace of re- 
ligion lasted, it seems, through the thirteen or 
fourteen years of Alexander's reign. But a great 
change came when he and Mammaea were mur- 
dered, as it is supposed, by the contrivance of 
Maximin, the gigantic Thracian. The giant is 
said to have consumed forty pounds of meat in a 
day, washing it down with an amphora of wine, 
and to have worn his wife's bracelet as a finger 
ring. Alexander favored the Christians. The 
bloody ogre vented his fury upon them, taking 
the bishops first. 

Hippolytus was one of the shining marks in 
the Christian church at which this cruel archer 
aimed. Both Hippolytus and Pontianus (so-called 
pope of the time) were sent to the mines of Sar- 
dinia. At fourscore the life of a convict could 
not be very long continued there. Both perished, 
we know not in what way, and, according to the 
Liberian Catalogue, both were buried on the same 
day, Pontianus in the Cemetery of St. Calixtus, 
and Hippolytus on the Via Tiburtina, where his 
statue in the marble chair was found in 155 1. 

The story of Prudentius that Hippolytus was 



102 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

dragged to death by wild horses in the streets of 
Ostia is thought to be apocryphal ; but it seems 
probable that both of these men died violent 
deaths from the fact that both were buried on the 
same day and that both were enrolled as martyrs. 
There seems to be a pathetic reference to his own 
banishment in a fragment of Hippolytus. Ad- 
dressing the beloved disciple, he says : " Tell me, 
blessed John, apostle and disciple of the Lord, 
what didst thou see and hear concerning Baby- 
lon ? Arise and speak, for it sent thee also into 
banishment." The words seem to have been 
written during his own banishment. 



XI 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON; OR, 

HOLY SCRIPTURE BEFORE POPES AND 

COUNCILS 



103 



XI 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON ; OR, 

HOLY SCRIPTURE BEFORE POPES 

AND COUNCILS 

The account given by Hippolytus of the 
Christian church shows plainly the falsity of the 
claim of the Church of Rome to a line of infallible 
popes leading back to Peter. His works show 
with equal clearness the falsity of the claim that 
the Roman Catholic Church made up the canon 
of Scripture and thus gave it authority by its im- 
primatur. 

Should this language seem too strong, I will 
willingly substitute for it that of Cardinal Gib- 
bons, as found in " The Faith of our Fathers " 
(44th ed., 1894), chapter viii. : "The Catholic 
Church, in the plenitude of her authority, in the 
third Council of Carthage (a.d. 397) separated 
the chaff from the wheat, and declared what 
books were canonical and what were apocryphal." 
On the same page he adds, " Indeed, when you 
accept the Bible as the Word of God, you are 
105 



106 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

obliged to receive it on the authority of the Catho- 
lic Church" etc. 

Now, long before this Council of Carthage, lived 
Hippolytus. After his active life began more than 
two whole centuries rolled away before this coun- 
cil assembled in the old African city. How was 
it with the canon two hundred years before this 
body of men are said to have manufactured it? 
Bunsen says: 

" The whole [New Testament] canon of Hip- 
polytus may be therefore reconstructed thus. It 
contained : 

" (i) The four Gospels. 

" (2) The Acts. . . . 

"(3) The Pauline epistles to seven distinct 
churches ; nine epistles as we read them. . . . 

" (4) The four Pastoral Letters : to Philemon 
and Titus, and the two addressed to Timothy. 

" (5) The six catholic (or general) epistles : the 
Epistle of St. James ; the Epistle of St. Peter (our 
first) ; the three epistles of St. John ; the Epistle 
of St. Jude. 

" (6) The Epistle to the Hebrews. . . . 

" (7) The Apocalypse of St. John."* 

It is remarkable that Bunsen represents Hip- 
polytus as omitting the Second Epistle of Peter. 
This is evidently an oversight, as Hippolytus 
quotes it several times, and it is once quoted in 

* Bunsen, " Hippolytus and his Age," vol. ii., p. 139. 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON IOJ 

one of the extracts from the " Refutation " in 
these pages. The reference to Zephyrinus and 
Callistus as " returning [after an apparent tem- 
porary reformation] to wallow in the same mire " 
is from 2 Peter ii. 22 : "The dog is turned to his 
own vomit again ; and the sow that was washed to 
her wallowing in the mire." This is, then, pre- 
cisely our canon of the New Testament. 

As to his conception of the authority of the 
Scriptures, Hippolytus views it just as Protestants 
do. Bunsen does not go at all beyond what any 
one reading the works of Hippolytus can see to 
be the fact when he says, " The expressions of 
Hippolytus on the paramount authority of Scrip- 
ture in all matters of faith and doctrine are as 
strong as those of the Reformers."* 

If space allowed, abundant quotations from 
Hippolytus could be cited to substantiate this, 
but one is sufficient: 

"There is one God, my brother, and Him we 
know only by the Holy Scriptures. For, in like 
manner as he who wishes to learn the wisdom of 
this world cannot accomplish it without studying 
the doctrines of the philosophers, thus all those 
who wish to practise the divine wisdom will not 
learn it from any other source than from the 
Word of God. Let us, therefore, see what the 
Holy Scriptures pronounce, let us understand 

* " Hippolytus and his Age," vol. ii., p. 144. 



108 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

what they teach, and let us believe as the Father 
wishes to be believed, and praise the Son as He 
wishes to be praised, and accept the Holy Spirit 
as He wishes to be given. Not according to our 
own will, nor according to our own reason, nor 
forcing w/iat God has given; but let us see all 
this as He has willed to show it by the Holy 
Scriptures." 

This is pure Protestantism, equally free from 
the spirit of popery, on the one hand, and from 
unbelieving rationalism, on the other. 

Could the grand old champion of a pure Chris- 
tianity rise and live again on earth, where the two 
great divisions of those who bear the name of 
Christians stand opposed, one bearing on its ban- 
ner, " The pope, the only infallible teacher," and 
the other the immortal words of Chillingworth, 
" The Bible, the Bible alone, is the religion of 
Protestants," there is no doubt as to which ranks 
the old hero would join. With the prayer that 
" all may be one," both he and we would rejoice 
to see unfurled the banner from which should 
shine forth, " The Bible, the Bible alone, the re- 
ligion of all Christians." 

For those Christians whose minds have been 
disturbed by the representations of the Tubingen 
school, and its small imitators and camp-followers 
along the byways of popular literature, as to the 
probability of the late origin of the Gospels, and 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON 109 

especially that of John, it is reassuring to find, in 
the works of a man born about fifty years after 
John's death, quotations from all the Gospels and 
all the other books of the New Testament, and to 
find also that these writings are continually called 
" the Holy Scriptures " and " the Word of God." 

As to Baur's theory that the Gospel of John 
was written A.D. 160-170, it is instructive to find 
Hippolytus, who was a theological student about 
A.D. 170, speaking in this way about it: "These 
things, then, brethren, are declared by the Scrip- 
tures ; and the blessed John, in the testimony of 
his Gospel, gives us an account of this economy 
and acknowledges this Word as God when he 
says : ' In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God.' " * 

It is still more reassuring to find that the teacher 
of Hippolytus quotes the New Testament in just 
the same way — as " the Word of God." 

The following extract, while very interesting 
as one of the earliest accounts of the writing of 
the New Testament, is especially so as showing 
how the teacher of Hippolytus regarded these 
writings. He says : 

" Matthew also issued a written Gospel among 
the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and 
Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the 
foundations of the church. 

* Treatise against the heresy of one Noetus, § 14. 



110 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

" After their departure Mark, the disciple and 
interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in 
writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke 
also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book 
the Gospel preached by him. Afterward John, 
the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned on 
His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during 
his residence at Ephesus in Asia. 

" These have all declared unto us that there is 
one God, Creator of heaven and earth, announced 
by the law and the prophets, and one Christ, the 
Son of God. If any one do not agree to these 
truths he despises the companions of the Lord ; 
nay, more : he despises Christ Himself, the Lord ; 
yea, he despises the Father also ; and stands con- 
demned, resisting and opposing his own salvation, 
as is the case with all heretics." * 

" When, however, they are confuted from the 
Scriptures, they turn and accuse these same Scrip- 
tures as if they were not correct nor of authority," 
etc. f 

Irenaeus may have been liable, as all men are, 
to make mistakes in his statements of facts ; but 
there can be no mistake about the fact that the 
teacher of Hippolytus held the New Testament 
to be the Word of God and that to reject it was 
to forfeit salvation. 

* " Adv. Hares.," book iii., chap. i. 
t Ibid., chap. ii. 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON I I I 

According to Keith,* Irenaeus, in that part of 
his works which is still extant (and we have only 
a part of what he wrote), quotes the New Testa- 
ment seven hundred and sixty-seven times, and 
" Irenaeus shows throughout his works an intimate 
knowledge of the Gospels, Acts, and epistles." He 
quotes the books of the New Testament as " the 
divine Scriptures," " the divine Oracles," " the 
Scriptures of the Lord." 

The fact that two books of the New Testament, 
the Third Epistle of John and the Epistle of Jude, 
are not quoted in the extant writings of Irenaeus 
is no indication that these books were not in the 
New Testament at that time. For we find that 
these two epistles together contain only thirty- 
nine verses, and any of us might write twice as 
much as we have from Irenaeus without having 
occasion to quote either of these very short letters. 
Indeed, it is a remarkable proof of the importance 
which he attached to the New Testament that 
there are found in his writings quotations from 
all the books of which it is composed, with this 
exception. 

Pothinus was Bishop of Lyons, and suffered 
martyrdom there in A.D. 177 in a most ruthless 
persecution under Marcus Aurelius. Irenaeus, 
who had been associated with him in his labors 
in Gaul, was made bishop in his stead, and seems 

* " Demonstration of the Truth of Christianity," chap. vi. 



112 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

not to have hesitated to assume the duties of a 
position than which none could have required 
more courage and stronger faith. 

A letter was written by the churches, and prob- 
ably sent by Irenaeus, who was in Rome the fol- 
lowing year, addressed " to those brethren in 
Asia and Phrygia having the same faith and hope 
with us." Asia was the name of a small division 
of the region afterward called Asia Minor, and 
Ephesus was its capital. This was the scene of 
the last days of the Apostle John, and the letter, 
while telling of the inhuman tortures and deaths 
of various members of their churches, dwells upon 
the suffering and faithfulness unto death of the 
aged and beloved bishop Pothinus. These facts 
certainly involve a strong probability that Po- 
thinus, like Polycarp, was a disciple of John. 

After describing the fiery trial and glorious 
triumph of others who laid down their lives for 
Christ, the letter continues : " But the blessed 
Pothinus, who had faithfully performed the minis- 
trations of the episcopate at Lyons, and was past 
his ninetieth year and very infirm in body . . . 
when carried by the soldiers to the tribunal, and 
when the mob raised a cry against him, gave a 
noble testimony. When asked by the governor, 
' Who was the God of the Christians ? ' he said, 
' If thou art worthy thou shalt know.' After this 
he was unmercifully dragged away, and endured 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON I I 3 

many stripes, while those that were near abused 
him with their hands and feet in every possible 
way, not even regarding his age. But those at 
a distance, whatever they had at hand every one 
hurled at him. . . . Thus, scarcely drawing 
breath, he was thrown into prison, and after two 
days he there expired." * 

In this letter there are quotations from the 
epistles to the Romans, Philippians, 1 Timothy, 
1 Peter, Acts, Gospels of Luke and John, and the 
Apocalypse. Within the limits of the letter twelve 
books of the New Testament are referred to. 
Would a letter of the same length written by 
Christians in our time, with the whole New Testa- 
ment before them, be likely to contain more quota- 
tions from it if the letter were a narrative of 
passing events and not a doctrinal discussion? 
These people in 177 show themselves to have 
been exceedingly familiar with the New Testa- 
ment and to have relied on its teachings as their 
source of instruction and comfort in times when 
each was liable to those tortures and that death 
by which their companions had shown their faith 
in its truths. But this New Testament had been 
the text-book from which Pothinus had taught 
them and doubtless the fathers of many of them. 
Polycarp of Smyrna had sent Irenaeus to his aid 
in his old age. Is not this another indication of 
*Eusebius, " Hist. Eccl.," book v., chap, i. 



114 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

the fact that Pothinus was from Asia? But would 
Pothinus, who must have been born before the 
last book of the New Testament was written, 
have taught it, and died for it, and exhorted his 
people to die for it, if he had not known that it 
was written by John ? In the letter of the churches 
of Lyons and Vienne these writings are quoted 
as " Scripture." 

Irenaeus was the younger colleague of and co- 
laborer with Pothinus, and Pothinus was old 
enough to have sat as a catechumen under the 
instruction of the beloved disciple. And in the 
extant writings of Irenaeus we have quotations 
from all the New Testament books, except the 
thirty-nine verses which make two very short 
letters. But Irenaeus was the disciple of Poly- 
carp, and Polycarp was not only old enough to 
be, but certainly was, the disciple of John. 

Does Polycarp, who sat at the feet of the be- 
loved disciple, indicate in any way the existence 
of the writings which we call the New Testament? 
If so, there can be no reason to doubt that they 
belong to the apostolic age, and that they were 
written by the persons whose names they bear 
and to whom they have always been ascribed. 
With the Apostle John as his instructor, he would 
certainly have been liable to no possibility of mis- 
take on this point. We have only one piece of 
writing from Polycarp, his Epistle to the Philip- 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON 1 1 5 

pians ; but this is of immense value. That doubt- 
ing Thomas among the critics, Professor A. Har- 
nack, who seems to linger on the edge of a decision 
in favor of the genuineness of any ancient docu- 
ment confirming the New Testament Scriptures, 
till absolutely forced over by unquestionable facts, 
joins his voice in favor of the genuineness of this 
letter of Poly carp. He says of it that " the ex- 
ternal evidence is as strong as could be desired " ; 
and also, " but the internal evidence is also very 
strong." Of its character he remarks that its 
" tone, language, and tendency " are " not in 
keeping with the Ignatian epistles." Of Poly- 
carp he says that he " lived wholly in the ideas 
of the older generation and of the apostles, and 
would admit no addition to their teaching." 
Harnack considers this epistle " of great value 
for the history of the canon." 

In this letter, which is by no means long, Poly- 
carp quotes fifteen books of the New Testament, 
and some of them several times — the Gospel of 
Matthew, for instance, if I mistake not, ten times. 

Now, if there had been any doubt in the mind 
of Polycarp about the genuineness of these writ- 
ings, would he have written a letter saturated 
through and through with New Testament 
thought and actually made up in large part of 
its very language? If they had been forgeries, 
would Polycarp, the pupil of John, and his con- 



Il6 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

temporary for almost forty years, have quoted 
them at all? 

The very way in which he quotes the New 
Testament is a clear indication of his reception of 
it as of divine authority. But he does not leave 
us simply to infer this, as no one can avoid doing 
if he reads the epistle. In quoting Ephesians iv. 
26 he says, " As it is said in those Scriptures, 
' Be ye angry, and sin not, and let not the sun go 
down on your wrath.' " 

Thus we find Hippolytus, through Irenaeus, 
his teacher, in whose footsteps he so closely fol- 
lowed in his " Refutation of all Heresies," linked 
with the apostolic age through these two vener- 
able men, Pothinus and Polycarp, both of whom 
laid down their lives for the faith which they 
professed. 

When we find Hippolytus, then, with all his 
means of information, quoting every book of the 
New Testament, we may feel very sure that 
those who deny the genuineness of these Scrip- 
tures do so in the face of incontrovertible evi- 
dence. 

When men deliberately lay down their lives 
rather than deny what they have asserted we have 
the highest order of testimony to their sincerity 
in making those assertions. It would be hard to 
find an exhibition of more thorough sincerity in 
all history than that of these two witnesses to the 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON I I 7 

truth — Polycarp, the preceptor, and Pothinus, the 
aged colleague of Irenaeus in his ministry in Gaul. 
The testimony of both has been preserved by 
letters of the churches which they served. 

The church of Smyrna, of which Polycarp was 
the bishop or pastor, that " angel of the church in 
Smyrna" addressed by John in the Revelation 
(or his successor), has left on record the good 
confession of him who was its guide by his ex- 
ample as well as his teaching for many years. 
The testimony of Polycarp in his life and in his 
death was of no ordinary importance. It came 
at a most critical period, as the seven messages 
to the churches recorded in the second and third 
chapters of the Book of Revelation clearly indi- 
cate, and such glimpses as we have of the times 
of Polycarp serve to emphasize this fact. 

Says Canon Westcott : " In one respect the 
testimony of Polycarp is more important than 
that of any of the apostolic fathers. Like his 
master [John], he lived to unite two ages ; he had 
listened to St. John and he became the teacher 
of Irenaeus. In an age of convulsion and change 
he stands at Smyrna and Rome as a type of the 
changeless truths of Christianity. In his extreme 
age he taught that which he had learned from the 
apostles and which continued to be the tradition 
of the church. . . . Thus the zeal of Polycarp 
watches over the whole of the most critical period 



Il8 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPO LYTUS 

of the history of Christianity. His words are the 
witnesses of the second age." * 

How he loved the truth and hated error, which 
was becoming so rife in his old age, we are shown 
by his stopping his ears when the vagaries of 
Valentinus and of Marcion were urged upon his 
attention, lamenting the fact that he had been 
preserved to old age to hear such things. 

In character he seems to have been strikingly 
like his master, John. When he went to Rome 
to confer with Anicetus, the senior pastor there 
(whom the Romanists represent as the pope of 
the time), about the time of the Easter celebration, 
though he was unable to effect a reconciliation 
between the advocates of the Eastern and those 
of the Western churches, there was no breach of 
charity, and he celebrated the Lord's Supper in 
Rome, using the Greek language. But, though 
so loving toward even those brethren who differed 
from him in such a matter, he was a very Boanerges 
when the vital truths of Christianity were assailed 
by heretics. 

Marcion seems to have endeavored to approach 
him, during this visit to Rome, to curry favor with 
him and secure the powerful aid of his influence; 
but he was rebuffed with such a lightning stroke 
as this : 

Marcion : " Thou knowest us." 

* Westcott on the Canon, p. 40. 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON 119 

Polycarp : " I know thee as the first-born of 
Satan." 

But his Christian constancy and fortitude were 
to have a severer test than was afforded by this 
encounter with the enemies of the faith in Rome. 

" The proconsul of Asia Minor [at this time] 
does not appear to have been personally hostile 
to the Christians ; but the heathen people, with 
whom the Jewish rabble joined themselves, were 
enraged against them, and the proconsul yielded 
compliance to the fury of the people and the de- 
mands of the law. . . . 

" When he [Polycarp] heard the cry of the 
people who were eager for his blood, his first im- 
pression was to remain in the town, and to await 
God's pleasure in the event; but the prayers of 
the church prevailed on him to take refuge in a 
neighboring country-seat. Here he remained in 
company with some friends, busied day and night, 
as he was accustomed, in offering prayers for all 
communities in the whole world. 

" When he was searched for he betook himself 
to another country place, and he had scarcely gone 
before the police appeared, to whom the retreat 
of Polycarp had been made known by some con- 
fidential but unworthy friends. They found two 
slaves, one of whom, under the pain of torture, 
betrayed the place to which the bishop had fled. 
When they came Polycarp, who was in the upper 



120 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

story, might have retreated from the flat roof to 
another house, a convenience which the Eastern 
mode of building afforded, but he said, ' God's 
will be done ! ' 

" He came down to the police officers, and or- 
dered them as much refreshment as they might 
be inclined to take, begging only as a favor that 
they would allow him one hour's undisturbed 
prayer. The fullness of his heart, however, carried 
him on for two hours, and even the heathen were 
touched at the sight of his devotion. 

" When this interval had passed he was con- 
ducted on an ass to the town, where the chief 
officer of police, going with his father out of the 
town, met him, and, taking him into his carriage, 
spoke to him in a kind and friendly manner. 
' What harm,' said he, ' can it be for you to say, 
" Our lord the emperor " ? ' Poly carp at first was 
silent, but when they continued to press him he 
calmly said, ' I will not do what you advise me.' 
When they saw that they could not persuade him 
they grew angry. With bitter and contumelious 
expressions they threw him out of the carriage 
so roughly as to injure one of the bones of his leg. 
He turned and went on his way as if nothing had 
happened. 

" When he appeared before the proconsul the 
latter said to him, ' Swear, curse Christ, and I will 
set you free ! ' 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON 1 2 I 

" The old man answered, ' Eighty and six years 
have I served Him, and I have received only good 
at His hands! Can I, then, curse Him, my King 
and my Saviour? ' 

" When the proconsul continued to press him 
Polycarp said, ' Well then, if you desire to know 
who I am, I tell you freely, lam a Christian.' . . . 
After the governor had in vain threatened him 
with wild beasts and the funeral pile, he made the 
herald publicly announce in the circus that Poly- 
carp had confessed himself a Christian. These 
words contained the sentence of death against 
him. The people instantly cried out, ' This is the 
teacher of atheism, the father of the Christians, 
the enemy of our gods, who has taught so many 
not to pray to the gods and not to sacrifice ! ' 

" As soon as the proconsul had complied with 
the demand of the populace that Polycarp should 
perish on the funeral pile, Jew and Gentile has- 
tened with the utmost eagerness to collect wood 
from the market-places and the baths. When 
they wished to fasten him with nails to the pile 
the old man said, ' Leave me thus, I pray, un- 
fastened. He who has enabled me to abide the 
fire will give me strength also to remain firm at 
the stake.' 

" Before the fire was lighted he prayed thus : 
' O Lord, almighty God ! the Father of Thy be- 
loved Son, Jesus Christ, through whom we receive 



122 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

a knowledge of Thee ! God of the angels and of 
the whole creation, of the whole human race, and 
of the saints who live before Thy presence! I 
thank Thee that Thou hast thought me worthy, 
this day and this hour, to share the cup of Thy 
Christ among the number of Thy witnesses! ' " * 

Thus was the faithful testimony which Polycarp 
had borne to Christ through his long life of service 
crowned and perfected in his death. 

Pothinus and Polycarp, to use an expression 
which Professor Gildersleeve has applied to Justin 
Martyr, were "no holiday Christians." They 
believed and therefore spoke ; for they were willing 
to seal their testimony with their blood. " All 
that a man hath will he give for his life." If the 
New Testament writings had been forgeries these 
men could not have failed to know it. Polycarp 
must have been born before most of Paul's epistles 
were written, and was probably between thirty 
and forty years old when John wrote his Gospel. 
It has been made almost certain within the last 
few years that his martyrdom took place not at 
the date given by Eusebius, but under the pro- 
consul Ouadratus, and on the 23d of February, 
A. D. 155-f Then he was old enough to say, 
" Eighty and six years have I served Him." 

Pothinus was a contemporary of John for eleven 

* Neander, " Ch. Hist.," pp. 64, 65, Rose's trans, 
t Adolph Harnack. 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON 1 23 

or twelve years, and Polycarp for thirty-nine 
years, if he dates his service from his tenth year. 
Now when we find in the letter of the churches 
which Pothinus had instructed for so many years, 
quotations from or allusions to some twelve books 
of the New Testament, and then turn to the epistle 
of Polycarp and find it made up in large part of 
quotations from the New Testament, we may feel 
sure that we have traced these writings back to 
the age of the apostles, and that they could not 
have been written by any persons but those to 
whom they are ascribed ; for these men were in 
a position to know that they were genuine. That 
they knew it is attested by the fact that they not 
only taught the truths contained in these writings 
during their lives, but laid down their lives in at- 
testation of the truth of their teaching. 



XII 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 



125 



XII 

THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 

We know, then, that the assertion of Baur and 
the Tubingen school to the effect that the Gospels, 
and especially the fourth Gospel, originated long 
after the deaths of their reputed authors is abso- 
lutely false. The assertion was made and has been 
maintained to uphold the theory of theological 
" tendency " evolved out of the fertile, German- 
student, inner-consciousness of Baur, and is in the 
face of all the facts of the case. If we had no 
other proofs of the origin of the Gospels in the 
apostolic age than these simple facts, that Hip- 
polytus quotes every book of the New Testament 
as Holy Scripture, that Irenseus before him quotes 
every book, with the exception of two short let- 
ters, containing together thirty-nine verses, that 
Polycarp, born near the time of Paul's death and 
for nearly forty years contemporary with the 
Apostle John, quotes thirteen books of the New 
Testament in his letter to the Philippians, quoting 
127 



128 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

very much more in proportion to the length of the 
production than Hippolytus and Irenaeus, and 
that both he and Pothinus, the co-laborer of Ire- 
naeus, laid down their lives in attestation of their 
testimony — these facts alone would be amply suffi- 
cient to establish the genuineness of these writings. 

Mathematical demonstration is impossible in 
this, as in all similar cases, but moral certainty is 
reached from these facts alone. These, however, 
are far from being the only facts to which Hip- 
polytus introduces us by which the genuineness 
of the New Testament Scriptures is proved. 

Hippolytus, clasping hands with his preceptor, 
Irenaeus, who brings us to Polycarp, thus, through 
this line of his spiritual ancestry, leads us back to 
that disciple who leaned on the bosom of the 
Saviour. 

But there is another line to which he introduces 
us, and by this, as well as by that of his spiritual 
ancestry, we are led back to John. He introduces 
us, in his " Refutation of all Heresies " especially, 
to numerous heretics; and these bear witness to 
the existence of the New Testament writings in 
their day. This testimony has at least one point 
of special value : it is the testimony of enemies. 

This gives us one advantage. We may be sure 
that when they quote the books of the New Testa- 
ment these books are not only in existence, — of 
this their quoting them is evidence, — but that they 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 1 29 

are already of recagnizcd autJiority, and must have 
been in existence for a considerable time in order 
to have been disseminated among all Christians 
and established in their confidence as the source 
of decisive authority in religious questions. Had 
they not been thus disseminated and received as 
the Word of God among Christians in various 
countries, these heretics would not have appealed 
to them as they did. 

Let us take a brief glance at some of the here- 
tics to whom Hippolytus introduces us. With- 
out noticing to any great extent their peculiar 
tenets, matters which are of little interest now, we 
may with profit notice their treatment of the New 
Testament Scriptures. 

The Ophites, called so because of their theories 
about the serpent as the Logos, or Eternal Wis- 
dom, formed a sect which existed very early. 
They are described by Irenaeus as well as by 
Hippolytus, and seem to have existed as a Chris- 
tian sect from the earlier part of the second cen- 
tury. They represent one branch of the Gnostic 
heresy, if not the main trunk of it. 

" The manner in which they used the New Tes- 
tament in order to support their special theory 
concerning the serpent is very curious. They dis- 
covered the serpent in the most unexpected 
quarters, for they used a method of arbitrary 
interpretation which will enable a man with luxu- 



130 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

riant imagination to prove any doctrine from any 
text. They quoted the four Gospels, but especially 
the Gospel of St. John." * 

This sect seems to have combined some of the 
peculiarities of the Basilidians and Valentinians. 

Basilides is said to have been a younger con- 
temporary of the beloved disciple. This is proba- 
ble, for several authorities represent him as 
teaching in Rome in the reign of Hadrian (i 1 7— 
138). He quoted the New Testament, and es- 
pecially the fourth Gospel. 

Says the author of the article on Basilides in 
Smith's " Dictionary of Christian Biography," 
" In spite of his peculiar opinions, the testimony 
of Basilides to our ' acknowledged books,' as given 
by Hippolytus, is comprehensive and clear." 

Hippolytus deals with Valentinus and the 
Valentinians in the sixth book of the " Refuta- 
tion." His system of Gnosticism is said to have 
been the most complicated of all ; different sects 
and schools drew their systems from it ; but that 
of Basilides, which Neander represents as having 
" the doctrines of emanation and dualism as the 
foundation of his system," is complicated enough, 
and fills one with amazement at its heaven-daring 
intrusion into the unrevealed mysteries of the 
divine nature and works. 

* Professor Stokes, of Dublin University, in Sunday at Home 
(London). 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 131 

The chief interest in Valentinianism for moderns 
is that it was very much like the popular fad of 
our day called Theosophy. Valentinus seems not 
to have considered paganism as necessarily wicked, 
but rather as a development preparatory to Chris- 
tianity, and here we may see that the theory of 
Evolution applied to religion is, like Theosophy, 
no new thing under the sun. 

It was against the teachings of this heretic and 
of Marcion that Polycarp made so emphatic a pro- 
test at the time of his visit to Anicetus in Rome. 

Valentinus, like Basilides, quoted the New Tes- 
tament, and, though he endeavored to read his 
system into it, recognized it as the standard of be- 
lief and the universally accepted authority among 
Christians. In this he was entirely unlike our 
modern Theosophists and religious Evolutionists. 

But Hippolytus introduces us to another Gnos- 
tic, in whom we may rightly feel a very special 
interest ; for, though he was drawn aside by the 
powerful current among the thinking men of his 
day of Gnosticism, and may be accused of hold- 
ing a philosophy or science, "falsely so called," 
yet he showed great sincerity and earnestness. 
His chief claim, however, to our interest arises 
from the fact that not only did he, like Basilides 
and Valentinus, quote the New Testament as the 
inspired Word of God, but he wrote a commen- 
tary on it. He has the distinction of being the 



132 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

first commentator on the New Testament so far 
as is known. This writer, Heracleon, was a Val- 
entinian. Heracleon's commentary is not now in 
existence, unless, indeed, it be hidden away some- 
where, as the " Refutation " was for so many ages 
in the convent on Mount Athos. But Origen has 
preserved many extracts from it, and from these 
we may learn how Heracleon regarded the New 
Testament Scriptures. 

On this point we have no inferior testimony. 
Here is that of Canon Westcott : 

" The introduction of the commentaries implies 
the strongest belief in the authenticity and author- 
ity of the New Testament Scriptures ; and this be- 
lief becomes more important when we notice the 
source from which they were derived. They took 
their rise among heretics, and not among Catho- 
lic Christians. Just as the earliest fathers applied 
to the Old Testament to bring out its real harmony 
with the Gospel, so heretics endeavored to recon- 
cile the Gospel with their own systems. Com- 
mentaries were made where the want of them was 
pressing. But, unless the Gospels had been gener- 
ally accepted, the need of such works would not 
have been felt. 

" Heracleon was forced to modify and turn 
much that he found in St. John, which he would 
not have done if the book had not been received 
beyond all doubt. And his evidence is more 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS I 33 

valuable because it appears that he had studied 
the history of the apostles and spoke of their lives 
with certainty. 

" The sense of the inspiration of the evange- 
lists — of some providential guidance by which 
they were led to select each fact in their history 
and each word in their narrative — is not more 
complete in Origen. 

" The first commentary on the New Testament 
exhibits the application of the same laws for its 
interpretation as were employed in the Old Tes- 
tament. The slightest variation of language was 
held to be significant." * 

This is exactly in accord with Dr. George Sal- 
mon's representation as to Heracleon's view of 
inspiration: " His theory of inspiration is just the 
same as the one now popularly current in the 
church of Christ." f 

Now it should be remembered that the value 
of the testimony of these heretics to the existence 
and acknowledged authority of the books of the 
New Testament is not at all dependent on the 
trustworthiness of the heretics as witnesses. The 
fact that they appealed to these books is evidence 
of their acceptance among Christians as the foun- 
tain of authority. 

The existence of these writings from the days 

* Westcott on the Canon, p. 304. 

t See article of Professor Stokes in Sunday at Home (London). 



134 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

of the apostles is indicated by another fact, which 
is perhaps not generally known. Both Basilides 
and Valentinus claimed a connection with apostles, 
each through a single link. Basilides claimed to 
have been instructed by one Glaucias, an interpre- 
ter of Peter, and Valentinus asserted that Theodas 
(or Theudas) was his instructor, and that this 
person was a disciple of Paul. 

Now, whether these claims were true or false, 
the fact that they were made shows that these 
men lived early enough to have been thus con- 
nected with these apostles ; for a claim which 
their contemporaries could not have believed 
would have prejudiced their cause instead of gain- 
ing acceptance for it. The learned Heracleon, 
for instance, could not have become a follower of 
Valentinus if the Theudas story had been in- 
credible. 

Basilides also claimed that secret discoveries 
were communicated to him by Matthias, the suc- 
cessor to the apostolate of Judas. He would 
hardly have made such a claim if it had been 
incredible to the men of his time. 

Hippolytus begins with the Ophites, as if they 
were the first of these Gnostics, and indicates in 
book vi., chapter i., of the "Refutation" that 
they were the progenitors of the Basilidians and 
Valentinians. Their quoting the Gospel of John 
and other New Testament books as authorities, or 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 1 35 

rather as the authority, with Christians indicates 
that they were accepted among them from the 
beginning. 

Hippolytus (in book v.), treating of this heresy 
at considerable length, notices some of the texts 
which they misinterpreted to support their theories. 
Among them are quotations from Matthew, Mark, 
and Luke, besides such passages as these from 
John's Gospel: i. 3, 4; ii. 1-11 ; iv. 10; vi. 44, 
etc.; vi. 53. 

How can the adherents of the Tubingen school 
hold up their heads in the face of these facts? 
How can they assert that these books were not 
written until many years after the time in which 
we find them extensively quoted ? We would 
consider it rather difficult to quote in this year 
of our Lord 1896 from a book which is not to be 
written till, say, 1926. But the Hegelian phi- 
losophy and German (or German/^^) inner-con- 
sciousness can do wonderful things. If the facts 
are against their theory they can readily conclude 
that this makes it " so much the worse for the 
facts." Common sense, however, would lead us 
to look at the facts first and then hear the theories. 

The Ophites (or Naasseni, as Hippolytus calls 
them) existed as a sect before Christ. Says Mos- 
heim : " This sect, which had its origin among the 
Jews, was of a more ancient date than the Chris- 
tian religion. A part of its followers embraced 









136 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

the gospel, while the rest retained their primitive 
superstition ; and hence arose the division of the 
Ophites into Christian and antichristian." 

The fact that Hippolytus in dealing with the 
errors of this sect of Egyptian Jewish Gnostics 
represents them as quoting the New Testament 
books, is quite suggestive in view of the very early 
rise of this heresy. 

Hippolytus also represents that Valentinus had 
his " starting-point " from Simon Magus and the 
philosophical systems of Plato and Pythagoras.* 
This may be true or it may not. But, whether 
the assertion is true or not, the fact that Hip- 
polytus asserted it is indicative of the early rise 
of this heresy also, and the quotations which its 
advocates made from the New Testament imply 
the existence of this collection of writings and 
their accepted authority among Christians from 
the apostolic age. 

The rise of the various phases of Gnosticism in 
connection with the spread of Christianity is a 
most interesting as well as a very saddening in- 
tellectual phenomenon. Egypt seems to have 
been a hotbed of these heresies. Alexandria was 
a center of wonderful intellectual activity. There 
met the advocates of the Egyptian and the Syrian 
Gnosis and the Greek philosophies. 

As the Ophites originated in Egypt and both 

* See " Refutation," book vi., chap. xv. 



THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 1 37 

Basilides and Valentinus began to propagate their 
theories there, it seems probable that the assertion 
of Hippolytus about the " starting-point " of Val- 
entinianism is true, in part at least. 

There are certainly great differences and con- 
trasts between these Gnostics and the school of 
Ferdinand Christian Baur. These early heretics 
received the New Testament writings as genuine 
and authoritative, while the advocates of the 
Tubingen theory endeavor to prove them to have 
been spurious documents, originating, with the 
exception of the Pauline epistles (the first four of 
which they acknowledge as genuine beyond all 
controversy, and others probably so), long after 
the apostolic age. Unlike the Tiibingenists, who 
deny the supernatural, they not only acknow- 
ledged it, but each sect endeavored to show its 
various features as revealed in the Scriptures to 
be in full accord with the particular phase of 
philosophy held by itself. 

In these and perhaps other respects there are 
great differences between the ancient advocates 
of the various forms of Gnosis, which gave them 
the name of Gnostics, and the modern advocates of 
" Reason," which gives them the name of Ration- 
alists ; but the ancient and the modern movements 
are precisely alike in one thing: they both em- 
braced systems of philosophy and applied their 
principles to the facts and doctrines of Christianity. 



138 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

As the result of the first great intellectual 
movement, we have Gnosticism in its Protean 
shapes, with its bythos and pleroma and demiurge 
and eons, and wild speculations about the un- 
known and the unknowable, in which we see men, 
as it were, vainly endeavoring and yet pretending 
to enter the very presence-chamber of God, for 
the purpose of revealing to the vulgar gaze those 
secrets of His own nature and work which He has 
not seen fit to reveal to mortal man ; " intruding 
into those things which they have not seen, vainly 
puffed up by their fleshly mind." 

As the result of the second movement, we find 
the Tiibingenists taking as self-evident the conclu- 
sions of Hegel, and thus adopting as absolutely 
certain the main positions of a system character- 
ized by the same idealistic pantheism as some, at 
least, of the Gnostics held, and, instead of trying 
to lay the Scriptures on the Procrustean bed -they 
have made, rejecting them altogether. Thus, while 
pursuing a course much like that of these heretics, 
they arrive at the conclusion of Agnosticism ra- 
ther than that of Gnosticism ; for it has long ago 
been recognized as the same thing to say " The 
universe [to irax*] is God" and "There is no God." 
Pantheism is atheism. 



XIII 
FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR 






139 



XIII 

FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR 

Is it less amazing to look upon the course of 
Baur and his followers than on that of the Gnostics ? 

Much instruction may be found in Baur's grad- 
ual progress from orthodoxy in early life to the 
extreme position which he afterward occupied as 
the founder of the Tubingen school of critics. It 
shows how the most powerful minds may be 
"spoiled through philosophy and vain deceit" 
when fully submitted to their influence. 

The father of Ferdinand Christian Baur was a 
diligent and conscientious pastor, first in a little 
village near Stuttgart, and afterward at Blaubeu- 
ren, a small town at the southern base of the Swa- 
bian Alps. He was the teacher of his son until 
his fourteenth year, when he left home to attend 
school. In 1809 Ferdinand Christian Baur be- 
came a student of the University of Tubingen, 
where he was afterward to become so distin- 
guished. His first production "was orthodox and 
141 



142 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

supernaturalistic in its attitude."* Now for the 
influences that turned him. 

Schleiermacher seems to have given the first 
touch that started this powerful and fertile intel- 
lect on its daring career of speculation in which, 
like an ignis fatuus, it has attracted and led astray 
so many of his own and the following generation. 
" The tendency and effect of Schleiermacher's ex- 
position of the Christian faith are to reduce the 
supernatural to a minimum, and to make the 
little that remains appear as natural as possible, 
and so to satisfy the claims of science and phi- 
losophy, while endeavoring to do justice to the 
sentiments of believers."! 

Then came Hegel. The Hegelian philosophy, 
adopted by Baur, was afterward applied by him 
to Christianity, and the result was the Tubingen 
theory of " tendencies." 

Strauss, who had been a pupil of Baur, and 
whose work on the " Life of Jesus " has " over- 
turned the faith of many," seems to have com- 
pleted the work of destroying Baur's faith in the 
genuineness and inspiration of the NewTestament. 

A false philosophy is usually the fountain of a 
false theology. The early heretics adopted the 
various forms of heathen philosophy, as Hippol- 
ytus takes great pains to show, and the result 

* Professor A. B. Bruce, in " Living Papers," vol. vii. 
t Ibid. 



FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR 1 43 

in each case was some form of the fantastic mon- 
grel monstrosity called Christian Gnosticism. 

These modern critics have likewise adopted a 
philosophy and applied it to Christianity, and the 
result is not a mixture of the false system and 
Christianity, as in the first case, but a rejection 
of Christianity as a divine revelation and super- 
natural religion. 

Under the powerful influence of his Hegelian 
philosophy, Baur tried to show that according to 
that philosophy there must be in the development 
of Christianity, as in the universe, a great process 
" which moves in a perpetual rhythm of affirma- 
tion, negation, and synthesis of opposites." * In 
order to apply the Hegelian theory to the develop- 
ment of Christianity he made out that each book 
of the New Testament must have been the out- 
come of the " tendency " of thought at a particu- 
lar period. Hence, while he accepts the plain 
evidence for the genuineness of the first four 
epistles of Paul (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, 
and Galatians), as, according to his theory, they 
suit the tendency of that period, he affirms that 
the Gospels could not have originated until much 
later, because his theory demanded it. The ten- 
dency which he thinks must have given birth to 
the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John could hardly 
have risen to high tide till about the middle of 

* Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. 



144 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

the second century, and hence these Gospels 
could not have been written till then. He holds 
that the Gospel of John comes after the time of 
affirmation and of negation and controversy, and 
represents the sentiment of those who were for 
the reconciliation of the two opposing schools he 
supposes to have arisen, and indicates the later 
tendency of " synthesis of opposites," so that the 
Gospel of John must have originated somewhere 
between 1 60 and 170 A.D. 

Now when Hippolytus shows us that these 
sects, which began to arise certainly very soon 
after the death of John, if not before, quoted 
all the Gospels, and his more than any of the rest, 
we have before our eyes very plain evidence that, 
however ingenious the theory of Baur may have 
been and whatever may have been the quality of 
that genius which was able to draw so many 
minds in its train, Baur was entirely mistaken. 
The facts are too numerous, too plain, and from 
too many sources to admit of any doubt that the 
gospels were in existence many years before the 
dates which he gives them. 

The conclusion of Zahn after the review of the 
evidence is that, "in view of the history of the 
text, opinions as to the origin of John's Gospel 
such as Baur has expressed must appear simply 
as madness. It follows, further, that the element 
which remains the same in all of the originals and 



FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR 1 45 

of the versions [he had spoken of corruptions of 
the text] amid all the variations that crept into 
the text between 150 and 160 must have been 
every "w here read at the beginning of the second 
century." Zahn concludes that the fourth Gospel, 
which Baur represents as not written till 160-1 70, 
was everywhere read in the year 100. 

The argument from the " Refutation " of Hip- 
polytus, who shows that it was quoted by Ophites, 
Valentinians, and Basilidians, leads without doubt 
to the same conclusion. 

Thus the same conclusion is reached by two 
distinct paths as their common goal, and its valid- 
ity is made the more evident by this fact. Zahn, 
looking at the text itself and studying its history 
in versions and variations, sees that the Gospel of 
John must have been in existence in the year 100 ; 
and we have seen our saint turning his search-light 
on these times and revealing the contentions of 
the various bands of Gnostics very soon after 
this date — contentions in which they made use 
of weapons taken from this armory, the Gospel 
of John. These weapons would have had no 
point or power if this Gospel had not been already 
generally known and accepted as authoritative. 

Those were not the days of railroads, tele- 
graphs, and steam printing-presses, and this gen- 
eral distribution and acceptance as authoritative 
pf the fourth Gospel implies that it had been 



I 4 6 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPP6LYTUS 

written a considerable time before it was thus 
quoted by opposing sects in different places. The 
slow multiplication of copies by the pen and the 
slow modes of travel in those times would make 
dissemination a slow process. 

Not all of us are prepared to receive with full 
assurance the conclusions which are reached by 
mere critical processes. Many of us cannot feel 
entirely sure about the grounds of such conclu- 
sions ; are uncertain about the " canons of criti- 
cism " employed ; may fear, perhaps, that the mind 
of the critic may have been in some degree influ- 
enced by a priori preconceptions; or we may 
have to confess that, owing to ignorance or some 
mental defect on our part, we become a little 
confused by the talk about " uncials " and " cur- 
sives " and "palimpsests" and "groups" and 
" families" of texts and versions — that we grow 
a little dazed or dizzy as we are led along such 
highways of learned research, and a little uncer- 
tain about our footing on these heights of erudi- 
tion, and somewhat faltering in the steps with 
which we proceed, if we proceed at all. But, 
without any "canons of criticism," or expert 
knowledge of texts, or any of the (to our appre- 
hension) rather lumbering apparatus with which 
the professional critic sets out on his explorations, 
we can appreciate plain facts ; and when our saint 
with his search-light shows us different sets of 






FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR 147 

men in different countries quoting a certain book 
or set of books, we know, for one thing, that such 
writings are in existence. Otherwise they could 
not be quoted. And our plain, every-day com- 
mon sense tells us that they would not be thus 
quoted unless they were of recognized authority 
on the matters under discussion, and that to have 
acquired such authority in different countries they 
must have been written a considerable time be- 
fore the quotations were made. 

The New Testament Scriptures were thus 
quoted soon after the close of the first century. 
Therefore they must have been written before the 
close of that century* 

* For a fuller view of the career of Baur, the reader is referred 
to the admirable treatise, " Ferdinand Christian Baur and his 
Theory of the Origin of Christianity," by Professor A. B. Bruce, 
in " Living Papers," vol. vii., to which I am chiefly indebted for 
whatever of interest or value is to be found in this short sketch. 
-P. P. F. 



XIV 
ERNEST RENAN 



149 



XIV 



ERNEST RENAN 



To some it may have seemed unnecessary to 
dwell at such length on the peculiar teachings of 
Baur, whose theory has been so thoroughly re- 
futed by facts that even those who hold the He- 
gelian philosophy see that it cannot be applied to 
Christianity after Baur's manner. Even Profes- 
sor Harnack has admitted that, as the result of 
recent discoveries, especially that of the " Dia- 
tessaron " of Tatian, " we learn . . . that about 
1 60 A.D. our four Gospels had already taken a 
place of prominence in the church and that no 
others had done so; and that, in particular, the 
fourth Gospel had taken a place alongside the 
three synoptics." This acknowledgment, though 
it lags far behind the natural interpretation of 
the facts at which we have been looking and of 
those to which we shall presently turn, thoroughly 
overturns the conclusions of Baur. 

But these facts are not generally known among 
151 



152 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

the great mass of readers, and the friends of 
Christianity should bestir themselves to make 
them known. 

The Tubingen school is by no means dead, and, 
though the positions of its founder about the date 
of the Gospels have been shown to be false by 
facts which no one can honestly ignore, yet the 
skeptical principles of the leader are still animat- 
ing a large number of followers, who, with some 
necessary change of view as to the origin of the 
Gospels, are yet cultivating in themselves and vast 
numbers under their influence the spirit of unbe- 
lief in Christianity as the divinely revealed and 
only true religion. The Hegelian philosophy 
is gaining a powerful and, it is to be feared, in- 
creasing influence * over cultivated minds. A 
notable article by one of the greatest thinkers 
of our times sounds a note of earnest warning 
against this most specious and yet most ensnar- 
ing of philosophical systems, f 

In the words of another very able writer, " Of 
the many antichristian influences which have 
been at work in the minds of the more cultivated 
classes of men during the last fifty years, it is 
doubtful if any have had a more noxious and 
wide-spread effect than the works of this writer 

* See Contemporary Revieiv for February, 1895. 
t See article in the Presbyterian Quarterly for January, 1895, 
by Dr. R. L. Dabney. 



ERNEST REN AN 1 53 

[Baur]. Not that his books, like those of Strauss 
or Renan, have ever commanded a wide circle of 
readers or appealed directly to the popular taste ; 
but they have served as an armory whence popu- 
lar writers have supplied themselves with weapons 
for their attacks upon the foundations of Chris- 
tianity." * 

Of this Hegelian tree, planted in Christian soil, 
we may think of Baur as the trunk, and Strauss 
and Renan as the main branches, and Harnack as 
a vigorous shoot from a Ritschlian bough. 

Baur's works were not fitted to influence the 
reading public. They are to a great extent "cav- 
iare to the general." But they reached and power- 
fully influenced scholars who could reach the 
great mass of readers. If the root has been hid- 
den from the vulgar eye, the branches to which 
it has supplied the sap have, unfortunately, at- 
tracted the gaze and gratified the appetite of the 
many who, like the Athenians and the sojourners 
in Athens, " spent their time in nothing else but 
either to tell or to hear some new thing." 

Strauss influenced the more thoughtful class of 
readers, like George Eliot, who translated his 
" Leben Jesu," and received from it, doubtless, 
one of the chief influences which robbed her of 
her faith. 

* Professor M. Maher, in the Month (London), November, 
1892. 



154 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

Renan has influenced that larger class who 
prefer the indulgence of fancy and the gratifica- 
tion of curiosity to real thinking, whose object 
in reading is enjoyment rather than finding the 
truth. He had a remarkable literary faculty 
which threw a charm over thoughts which, when 
weighed in the balance of sober reason, would be 
found utterly wanting. He was a born writer. 
When asked in childhood what he intended to do 
in life his answer was, " I will make books." His 
own account of his early dreams of ambition re- 
minds one of De Ouincey's account of the dreams 
of his childish imagination, stimulated by the 
beautiful and sublime in the architecture and ser- 
vices of the grand old church of his childhood. 
Renan, in the church of Treguier, his birthplace, 
had dreams too. He tells us, in " Recollections 
of my Youth " : " During the services in church 
I used to fall into veritable reveries ; my eye 
wandered in the vaulted roof; I read there I 
knew not what ; I thought of the celebrity of the 
great men books tell of." His taste for literature 
was further cultivated and developed by an elo- 
quent and energetic teacher, M. Dupanloup. 

All his work in life shows the effect of this 
early bent and the influences about him. Accu- 
racy and truth are made to yield to artistic ex- 
cellence. He wrote what he felt would be plea- 
sant to read and would secure the admiration of 



ERNEST REN AN 155 

the reader for the author's genius. He wrote to 
please the many. He seems to have had the 
effect on the multitude always in view. " I have 
not existed completely, but for the public," is his 
own avowal.* 

It is this that has made the skeptical principles 
of the Tubingen school so widely harmful. The 
skepticism of it, under a different form from that 
of the stricter adherents of Baur, yet the same in 
principle and influence, is brought within the 
reach of the general public by Renan. The poi- 
son is the same in both. In one case it is in the 
root, for the few who delve for it. In the other 
it is in the fruit, where it attracts the admiration 
and allures the appetite of the multitude. 

His " Vie de Jesus " is like a romance. There 
is a charm in the sentences in which that wonder- 
ful life is described which leads captive the lover 
of the beautiful in literature, and the imagination 
finds a stimulus and gratification in the scenes 
and incidents of the Saviour's earthly career. 
Canaan, the land that flowed with milk and 
honey, rises before the mind's eye as another 
Eden, a very Paradise regained, as one follows the 
footsteps of the wonderful Galilean through His 
varied experiences. 

Renan does not show a spirit of hostility, like 
the ordinary infidel, who exhibits his impiety in 

* " Recollections." 



156 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

every utterance. On the other hand, much of 
the time at least, he seems to invite us to admire 
Christ. He even speaks in a pious strain. In 
dedicating the book to his sister, who was with 
him in the Holy Land and assisting him, and 
who had died while he was lying unconscious 
under the power of the same disease which took 
her from his side, he says, " You were always 
persuaded that the spirits truly religious would 
be pleased with it." He seemed to have no doubt 
that he was one of " the spirits truly religious." 

Yet the denial of the supernatural in this won- 
derful life underlies all that he says of it, and the 
main purpose of the book is to eliminate it. But 
he emphasizes the natural and depicts it with the 
enthusiasm of the born artist. 

In describing that Being whom angels adore 
and at whose feet the redeemed fall in the sweet- 
est rapture of gratitude and love, he lavishes all 
the terms of florid rhetoric to exalt the beauty and 
attractiveness of His person, in order to conceal the 
blasphemous denial of His divinity — a blasphemy 
none the less wicked and harmful because clothed 
in such ornaments. It is the more dangerous on 
this account, because by thus pleasing the es- 
thetic taste and eliciting the admiration of the 
reader for Christ as a man he the more easily satis- 
fies him by making Him such a man, and thus robs 
Him of His crown as God over all. The thought- 



ERNEST REN AN I 57 

less reader, dazzled by the brilliancy of the dis- 
play, is not aware of his great loss, and, led by 
the subtle charm along so pleasant and flowery a 
path, is presently surprised to find himself in the 
barren desert of unbelief, bereft of a Saviour, and 
with all the sweet hope of a heaven in the future 
faded from his soul. 

But, while Renan represents Christ in a very 
attractive light in some respects, it is not to be 
inferred that he allows Him perfection. Espe- 
cially in the latter part of His life he pretends to 
find not only blunders, but instances of moral 
dereliction. Thus Renan, who at one time invites 
us to admire, if not to adore, at another bids us 
find blemishes and criticise. 

Thus this man, who seems so mild and gentle, 
at last goes beyond most of the blatant infidels 
in taking up the challenge of the Saviour, " Which 
of you convinceth [R. V., " convicteth "] Me of 
sin?" — a challenge which few have had the dar- 
ing impiety to accept. 

It is impossible to estimate the amount of evil 
that has come to the readers of our time from 
these sources. Thousands who never dream that 
they are in danger as they bend over the strangely 
fascinating novel or periodical, but, on the other 
hand, feel very comfortably pious in finding them- 
selves so deeply interested in religious reading, 
are nevertheless imbibing a fatal virus. It is re- 



158 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPO LYTUS 

ligious reading, but of the Renan sort. M. Doudan 
has described that very succinctly : "Renan donne 
aux hommes de sa generation ce qu'ils desirent 
en toutes choses — des bonbons qui sentent l'in- 
fini " (" Renan gives the men of his generation 
what they love in everything — sweetmeats 
scented with the infinite ").* A religion without 
the obligation of holiness, without heaven or hell 
or Bible or God, but with only a delicate and 
undefined " scent of the infinite," has for many 
minds a strange fascination. 

Poor dupes ! The fascination is that of a ser- 
pent whose brilliant hues and graceful coil and 
facile speech are to rob them of the Eden of their 
faith by the promise of some higher " knowledge 
of good and evil." Alas! when their eyes are 
opened they will find themselves naked indeed, 
stripped of all that is best — " having no hope, 
and without God in the world." 

There is a warning for us all in the story which 
Renan gives of the loss of his faith, though we can- 
not fully accept his account of it as in all parts cor- 
rect. When he lays the blame on the architec- 
ture of the old church which he attended in 
childhood, we have to take this as one of the 
freaks of his lively fancy, and to think that this 
is one of the things which he wrote with a smile, 
and over against which, " if such things were 

* Elmslie's essay on Ernest Renan, p. 45. 



ERNEST REN AN I 59 

usual," he would have written " aim grano." 
We may well believe that his " dreams " in the 
old cathedral might have developed his imagina- 
tion ; but it is hard to credit the assertion that 
" the cathedral, a masterpiece of airy lightness, 
a hopeless effort to realize in granite an impossi- 
ble ideal, first of all warped my judgment. . . . 
That architectural paradox made me a man of 
chimeras." 

Not the arcJiitecture, but the teachings of the 
church were in a large degree responsible for his 
moral and mental defects. Think of the effect 
on an active mind of such a sham as he describes 
a page or two further on, in his " Recollections 
of my Youth " : 

" Upon the eve of the festival [of St. Yves] 
the people assembled in the church, and on the 
stroke of midnight the saint stretched out his arms 
to bless the kneeling congregation. But if among 
them all there was one doubting soul who raised 
his eyes to see if the miracle really did take place, 
the saint, taking just offense at such a suspicion, 
did not move, and by the misconduct of this in- 
credulous person no benediction' was given." 

Is it strange that a boy who was required to 
believe in such transparent trickery as this should 
soon cease to believe all that the tricksters taught 
him? The miracles of Rome may deceive the 
very dull and ignorant, but the effect of them on 



160 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST H1PP0LYTUS 

most minds, where there is a capability for rea- 
soning, is to make them skeptical about all reli- 
gion because they see so plainly the fraud in this 
pretense. 

But much of the fault was in Renan himself. 
From his own account, in both series of " Recol- 
lections," he seems to have been most thoroughly 
selfish, self-conscious, self-indulgent, almost 
wholly devoid of conscience or a sense of duty. 
Many shameless expressions, as well as his phys- 
iognomy, seem to indicate that he was not only 
an intellectual Sybarite, which he most certainly 
was, but a physical one too. 

He jests lightly about the most serious mat- 
ters, and the end in all he says seems to be never 
to lead to the truth or to benefit any soul, but 
simply to elicit admiration. He made himself 
his god, and it was easy for him to disbelieve 
in a Creator to whom he owed anything or a 
Judge to whom he would have to account for 
his life. That life must be to him an " enjoy- 
ment," and that seems to be his whole view 
of it. As he recognized no such thing as duty 
to God, it was natural that he should soon come 
to disbelieve in Him, and in His disregarded 
commands and revelation. Sin makes men blind 
to God and all that is of God. " If any man be 
willing to do His will, he shall know," etc. A 
willing and obedient heart is the organ of spirit- 



ERNEST REN AN l6l 

ual knowledge. It opens the soul's eyes wide to 
see and know the truth. 

The utter incapability which Renan exhibits 
of being serious about anything is such a marked 
characteristic that some one has called him a man 
with a " cork soul." He seems incapable of stay- 
ing below the surface in those dark depths and 
mysteries which he very often plunges into just 
to bound away from them and dance on the 
laughing waves of ironical raillery. 

He speaks ironically and lightly on the most 
solemn themes, and jests about matters which it 
should sober every human being to think of. In 
the preface to his " Recollections and Letters " 
he says : " I confess I should not feel indifferent 
at being the object of a fine funeral in Paris. . . . 
And if they were to introduce in it a little feast- 
ing and revelry, oh, really, what harm would 
that do?" 

He can write in the same light vein about the 
solemn mystery of the experiences of the soul 
after death : 

" After my death, round the ruined Church of 
St. Michel, which frowns down on Treguier, my 
soul shall nightly fly in the form of a white sea- 
mew, beating the bolted door and barred win- 
dows, seeking to enter the sanctuary, but ignorant 
of the secret way, wailing incessantly. ' 'Tis the 
soul of a priest that wants to say his mass,' the 



1 62 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

passing peasant will murmur. ' He will never 
find a clerk to make the responses,' another will 
answer. Just so. It is precisely this that has 
always been lacking in my church — the response," 
etc. 

Well, he has now gone to those experiences 
about which his fancy could play so lightly. May 
we all be ready when called to try them ! 

The Hegelian philosophy doubtless had much 
to do with bringing Renan to that atheistic pan- 
theism which took away all reverence and sense 
of duty, along with all solemnity, from his mind. 
And that philosophy is robbing many of their 
faith now, especially in our country and in Great 
Britain. Many of the most attractive teachers 
are instilling it into receptive and active minds 
among college and university students.* 

But we have wandered long enough among 
the shadows, and it is time to come back to the 
light. 

* It would be hard to find a better guide to the study of Renan 
than the essay referred to above, " Ernest Renan and his Criti- 
cism of Christ," by the Rev. W. G. Elmslie, M.A., " Living 
Papers," vol. iv. In connection with the " Recollections of my 
Youth," " Recollections and Letters," and "Life of Jesus," it 
has been freely used in preparing the foregoing sketch. 



XV 

THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND NEW DISCOVERIES 
—THE "DIATESSARON" 



163 



XV 

THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND NEW DISCOVERIES 
— THE ''DIATESSARON" 

FOLLOWING the rays of the search-light, we 
now turn to two discoveries of very great inter- 
est — both of the present decade, and one of them 
very recent. 

Among the characters to' whom Hippolytus 
calls our attention by no means the least interest- 
ing is Tatian. Little is known of his personal his- 
tory. He was, as he himself tells us, an Assy- 
rian, and a student of philosophy from his youth. 
He was born about no A.D. and died in 172. 

He was an earnest and conscientious seeker 
after truth. After traveling in different coun- 
tries in his extensive study of the philosophy of 
various schools, like Justin Martyr, he came to 
know the books of the Bible. After studying 
these " barbaric books," as from the standpoint 
of his Greek culture he at first considered them, 
his conclusion was that the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures were " too old to be compared with the 
165 



1 66 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

learning of the Greeks, too divine to be put on a 
level with their erroneous doctrines." 

Irenaeus tells us * that " he was a hearer of 
Justin's." Like his master, Justin Martyr, he 
did not cease to be a philosopher when he 
became a Christian, considering Christianity the 
very crown and capstone of philosophy. 

Hippolytus classes him with the heretics, as 
did Irenaeus before him. Many good men have 
been thus classed by other good men from whom 
they differed on some point of doctrine. He was 
an Encratite, or temperance man, and exalted 
the duty of self-control, especially in the denial 
of all fleshly appetites. That Oriental philosophy 
which was his birthright, the ground principle 
of which is the essential evil of matter and the 
goodness of spirit, was calculated to lead earnest 
minds into just such extreme views with regard 
to fasting and abstaining from marriage as are 
attributed to the Encratites. 

Irenaeus tells us that as long as Tatian had the 
companionship of Justin Martyr " he expressed 
no such views, but after his martyrdom he sepa- 
rated from the church," and also that he "com- 
posed his own peculiar type of doctrine." Among 
other things, " he declared that marriage was 
nothingbut corruption and fornication." It seems, 
also, that he held the opinion that Adam was 

* "Adv. Haeres.," book i., chap, xxviii. 



THE " D1ATESSAR0N" 1 67 

never forgiven and saved, because the Scriptures 
represent that "in Adam all die." Before se- 
verely condemning him for this peculiar opinion 
about marriage we should remember that the doc- 
trine of celibacy, as held by the Roman Catholics 
and other branches of nominal Christians in our 
own time, has this view of the marriage state as its 
unacknowledged, but not the less real, foundation. 

But we are not interested now in Tatian's or- 
thodoxy so much as in a deed which he did for 
the world — the production of a work which still 
exists, a work which in the early days of Chris- 
tianity was in use in the Christian churches of 
Syria for a long time, and evidently, in transla- 
tions, in other countries also; while its recent 
resurrection, as from a tomb where it had lain 
buried for many centuries, is a boon to our own 
times. It is probably the first harmony of the 
Gospels that was ever made. 

Knowing the bearing which the existence of 
such a work prepared about 150 A.D. would have 
on the controversy about the origin of the Gos- 
pels, it was denied by some skeptical writers 
that any such book ever existed. In an able an- 
tichristian book, " Supernatural Religion," pub- 
lished in England in 1875, the anonymous author 
ventured to assert that " no one seems to have 
seen Tatian's harmony, probably for the simple 
reason that there was no such work." 



1 68 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

The sarcasm would most certainly have been 
withheld if the author could have foreseen that 
St. Ephraem's " Commentary " on Tatian's 
" Diatessaron " would be published in May of the 
following year by Dr. Georgius Moesinger. In 
1 88 1 Zahn published his monograph, "in which, 
by means of citations from Ephraem's ' Com- 
mentary,' ... he restored a considerable part 
of the original text of Tatian." * 

This publication awakened interest in a MS. in 
the Vatican library which purported to be an 
Arabic translation of the " Diatessaron," and led 
Ciasca, an eminent Oriental scholar connected 
with the library, to examine it. He did not find 
time to translate and publish it immediately, and 
this delay seems to have been providentially di- 
rected, as many another disappointment and en- 
forced delay has been, for the best result in the 
end. 

While waiting for an opportunity to do the 
work Ciasca one day showed the codex to the 
apostolic vicar-general of the Catholic Copts in 
Egypt, who happened to be in the library. As 
soon as he looked into it he said that there was 
another copy of the work in the possession of a 
gentleman in Egypt, and that he could have it 
brought to Rome. He succeeded in doing so, 

* Article in the London Month, December, 1892, by M. 
Maher. 



THE " DIATESSARON " 169 

and the following is a description of the Egyptian 
codex : 

" The codex consists of three hundred and 
fifty-three leaves. There is no date attached, 
but the MS. seems to belong at the latest to the 
fourteenth century. The pages are nine by six 
and one quarter inches, inclosed in an illumi- 
nated square of golden, red, and purple lines, with 
an ornamentation of golden asterisks." * 

This second MS. was of very great use, as it 
supplied lacunae and cleared up obscure readings 
in the first. 

The first MS. was called the Vatican and the 
second the Borgian, as it was deposited in the 
Borgian library. 

Now, in a new edition in 1879, the author of 
" Supernatural Religion " ventured to say, " It is 
obvious that there is no evidence of any value 
connecting Tatian's Gospel with those in our 
canon." f 

Two years later Zahn's reproduction of a part 
of Tatian's text appeared ; four years later Ciasca 
published his description of the codex, contain- 
ing the text itself, and in 1888 he had his long- 
delayed translation (into Latin), with the Arabic 

* Article in the London Month, December, 1892, by M. 
Maher. 

t Vol. ii., p. 157, 1879. Quoted by Dr. Wace in his tract on 
" The Authenticity of the Four Gospels." 



170 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

text, issued from the press of the Propaganda in 
time to present it to the pope on the occasion of 
his jubilee. 

These were notable collisions of false assertions 
with facts which served to demonstrate their 
falsity and proclaim it, as it were, from the very 
housetops. 

Many questions crowd for answer here. What 
is the date of this work ? Are the Gospels of the 
" Diatessaron " " our Gospels " only, or are there 
mingled with them parts of apocryphal Gospels ? 
Does Tatian seem to regard these writings of 
merely historical interest, or as the record of a 
divine revelation? Are the Gospels quoted 
placed in separate columns, or are they inter- 
woven so as to make a continuous narrative? 

In the endeavor to answer these questions I 
shall rely chiefly on the account given by Pro- 
fessor Maher, of Stonyhurst, from whose interest- 
ing articles in the Month I have already quoted. 

As to the date of Tatian 's work entire certainty 
cannot be attained. There are indications, how- 
ever, that it does not belong to the latter part of 
his life — the Encratite period. These are found 
in the fact that he does not omit or modify any- 
thing which would be hostile to his later views 
on marriage. For instance, he gives in full the 
account of the marriage in Cana of Galilee. 

The " Diatessaron " is conjecturally dated at 



THE " DIATESS/tRON" 171 

A.D. 1 50. It contains our four Gospels, without a 
trace of any of the later apocryphal Gospels. One 
or two expressions occur which are not to be 
found in our " received " text, nor in that of 
Westcott and Hort, the text chiefly used in pre- 
paring the Revised Version, but they have been 
traced to the Curetonian Syriac text, and of the 
significance of this we will presently catch a 
glimpse. 

The Gospels do not appear in separate columns, 
but are interwoven so as to form a continuous 
narrative. 

Tatian's treatment of these Gospels plainly 
shows that he regards them as part of the inspired 
Word of God. The "chaff" of which Cardinal 
Gibbons speaks had evidently not yet become 
mingled with the wheat, so as to make it neces- 
sary for a church council to assemble and go to 
sifting. Ecclesiasticism was the great cultivator 
of this fictitious " chaff," as any one will see who 
will take the Ignatian epistles, for instance, with 
the shorter and longer recensions in parallel col- 
umns. The interpolations which make a large 
part of the longer recension are hierarchical and 
ecclesiastical " chaff " indeed. 

Tatian's Gospels are our four, and the very 
name of his work emphasizes it. It is " The Dia 
Tessaron " — " The Through Four " : the one life 
through the four evangelists. 



172 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

Now, as to the text which Tatian must have 
used, Professor Maher remarks : " A writer as fa- 
miliar as Tatian certainly was with all the literature 
of his time, and personally acquainted with St. 
Justin and the leading Christian churches, . . . 
would have been certain to have provided him- 
self with the best and oldest MSS. within his 
reach. This fact should never be forgotten in 
estimating the value of the ' Diatessaron.' " 

Let us remember in forming this estimate such 
facts as these : Tatian was associated with Justin 
Martyr, a man of learning and eminence, who 
spoke with great freedom to Roman emperors, as 
his two "Apologies" show; and he must have 
known many Christians who, when John's Gos- 
pel was written, were of age and could well re- 
member its first reception among the Christian 
churches. Could this accomplished scholar, born 
ten or twelve years after John's death, with such 
advantages as he had for gaining information, 
and with so critical a turn of mind, have made 
the mistake of receiving a spurious document 
as a Gospel written by the beloved disciple ? 

Notice the way in which he uses both this and 
the synoptic Gospels. The first words of the 
" Diatessaron " are those with which the Gospel 
of John begins : " In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
God." Professor Maher tells us, "The greatest 



THE " DIATESSAROhl " 173 

care is displayed to adhere as far as possible to 
the very words of the several evangelists, and 
brief texts and fragments of texts are industri- 
ously pieced together, so that an elaborate mosaic 
is the result." On this Professor Maher remarks : 
" If Tatian or any other author of his time had 
merely written that ' the four Gospels are univer- 
sally believed to be inspired,' it would still be 
possible to dispute as to what he meant by the 
word ' inspired.' But the ' Diatessaron ' provides 
us with an object-lesson which makes the matter 
plain. The reverent care and labor with which 
the texts of the four evangelists are interwoven, 
and their sentences and phrases preserved, proves 
the belief in the peculiar sacredness, in the mys- 
terious virtue in their briefest utterances. . . . 

" It is only the conviction of the divine charac- 
ter of the Gospels, both on the part of the author 
and his readers, which could have given rise to 
the attempt at such a harmony." 

This last sentence embodies what must be the 
conclusion of every thoughtful and unprejudiced 
mind. What Canon Westcott says of the appear- 
ance, at nearly the same time in which the " Dia- 
tessaron " was prepared, of the " Commentary " 
of Heracleon is entirely applicable here : " Unless 
the Gospels had been generally accepted, the need 
of such works would not have been felt." We 
may further say that, unless these Gospels had 



174 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

been not only accepted, but were very highly 
prized and venerated, and generally and carefully 
studied by Christians, it is hardly probable that 
such a work as the " Diatessaron " of Tatian 
would have been prepared and placed at their 
service. It would certainly never have been done 
with the evidences of such reverential care if, as 
some of our friends would have us believe, at this 
time everything was in a state of uncertainty 
about the sacred records, and there was doubt 
as to what was wheat and what was " chaff." In 
the clear light and winnowing wind of these dis- 
coveries, much that has heretofore masqueraded 
as " impartial criticism " has been found to be 
very aptly designated by the last word of the last 
sentence, and forever whirled away from the field 
of controversy. With all the fine phrases of its 
vaunted erudition, it is shown to be but " chaff" 
indeed. 

Tatian, as we have seen, had as his instructor 
in righteousness no less a person than Justin 
Martyr. 

Justin, in writing his " Apologies " to heathen 
emperors, very naturally did not give the names 
of the evangelists in quoting from them, as this 
would have added nothing to the weight of what 
was written with these men. But, in spite of the 
fact that he was writing to heathen men who 
were probably ignorant of the writers of the New 



THE " DUTESSARON" 175 

Testament, it is remarkable that his arguments 
are full of quotations from and plain references 
to these writings. It has been remarked that, if 
all other sources of information were destroyed, 
we could learn the main facts of our Saviour's life 
through the quotations of Justin Martyr alone. 
I think the statement could be made still stronger. 
From chapters xxx.-lx. of the first " Apology " 
alone we could learn all the cardinal facts of 
our Saviour's life and work. Though, philos- 
opher as he was, he reasoned in the manner of 
the philosophers of his day, it is wonderful to see 
his reasonings saturated with scriptural thought 
and plentifully intermingled with quotations from 
the Old and New Testaments. 

The fact that his pupil, Tatian, arranged the 
four Gospels into a harmony makes it clearer and 
more indisputable that the four Gospels were al- 
ready gathered together and fully recognized as 
the authentic and inspired memorials of the life 
of Christ, and that the quotations and references 
of Justin Martyr are not a record of mere verbal 
traditions handed down among the Christians. 
That these "memoirs" were already not only 
gathered, but in constant use in Christian wor- 
ship, is made perfectly clear by Justin's own 
words : " On the day which is called Sunday 
there is an assembly in one place of all who dwell 
either in towns or in the country, and the mem- 



176 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPO LYTUS 

oirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets 
are read as long as the time permits." * 

That these "memoirs of the apostles" were 
our four Gospels was quite plain before the dis- 
covery of Tatian's " Diatessaron," for, as Pro- 
fessor Gildersleeve remarks : " As Irenaeus, 
Clement, and Tertullian quote our Gospels, the 
negative theory requires us to believe that in the 
short interval an entire change of Gospels was 
made throughout all the different and distant 
provinces of the Roman empire at a time when 
concerted action through general councils was 
unknown, and that, too, in so silent a manner 
that no record of it remains in the history of the 
church." 

Since the discovery of Tatian's harmony, doubt 
is no longer possible, for there we find our four 
Gospels interwoven by Justin's pupil, Tatian, so 
as to form a continuous account of our Saviour's 
words and deeds. 

Let us now turn to a still more recent and ex- 
ceedingly interesting discovery. We shall find 
it another of that cloud of witnesses God, in His 
providence, is raising from the dust, in these lat- 
ter days of doubt and skepticism, to attest the 
genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures. 

* First " Apology," chap. Ixvii. 



XVI 
THE NEW SYRIAC GOSPELS" 



177 



XVI 

"THE NEW SYRIAC GOSPELS" 

In the Contemporary Review for November, 
1894, there appeared a most interesting article 
by Professor J. Rendel Harris, the eminent text- 
ual critic, in which he described a palimpsest 
recently discovered in the St. Catharine Convent, 
on Mount Sinai. 

Some readers may need to be informed that a 
palimpsest is a manuscript in which the original 
writing has been partially erased by the use of 
pumice-stone or some other means, and written 
over with some later production. The expensive- 
ness of parchment led to the frequent use of old 
manuscripts for later writings in this way. 

The place had already been made famous by 
the discovery there, in 1859, of the Sinaitic Co- 
dex, by Tischendorf, and the discovery in 1890, 
by Professor J. Rendel Harris, of the long-lost 
" Apology " of Aristides. 

An interesting fact about the discovery of " The 
179 



l8o THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

New Syriac Gospels," * of which Professor Harris 
gives an account in the Contemporary, is that it 
was made by a woman. 

In the spring of 1892 Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis, 
the widow of the Rev. S. S. Lewis, the librarian 
of Corpus Christi College, of Cambridge Univer- 
sity, England, in company with her twin sister, 
Mrs. Gibson, also of Cambridge, made a jour- 
ney to the East, and, induced by their interest 
in Professor J. Rendel Harris's then recent dis- 
covery of the " Apology " of Aristides in the 
library of the Convent of St. Catharine, they 
went there. 

In the words of Mrs. Lewis, " Among the 
Syriac books which they [the monks] showed us, 
I soon picked up a volume of one hundred and 
seventy-eight leaves, nearly all glued together 
with some greasy substance. I separated them, 
partly with my fingers and partly with the steam 
of a kettle. They had the more fascination for 
me that no human eye had, evidently, looked 
on them for centuries ; and I soon perceived that 
it was a palimpsest, whose upper, or later, writ- 

* For a fuller account the reader is referred to " The Four 
Gospels in Syriac," translated from the Sinaitic palimpsest by 
the late Robert L. Bensley . . . and by J. Rendel Harris, M.A., 
lecturer of the University of Cambridge, etc. (Macmillan), and 
to " How the Codex was Found," by Mrs. Gibson, and to 
" Translation of the Four Gospels from the Syriac," by Mrs. 
A. S. Lewis, the discoverer (Macmillan). 



"THE NEIV SYRIAC GOSPELS" l8l 

ing contained the stories of woman saints, while 
the under one was the four Gospels." 

She determined to photograph the whole pa- 
limpsest, which she did, with the assistance of 
Mrs. Gibson. Great difficulties had to be over- 
come in order to accomplish this undertaking, 
but the work was at last completed, and the sis- 
ters returned to England with their prize. These 
Syriac Gospels were found to have much in com- 
mon with those discovered by Cureton, and which 
bear his name. The colophon of the MS. also 
indicates its connection with the Curetonian Syr- 
iac MS. 

Partly owing to the spoiling of some of the 
photographs in developing, it became necessary, 
in order to obtain a fully satisfactory result, that 
another visit should be made to Mount Sinai. The 
sisters returned to the convent, in company with 
Professor Harris and Professors Bensley and Bur- 
kitt, and their wives, and they together worked 
" from sunrise to sunset " for more than a month. 
A " chemical reviver " was used, and thereby the 
old codex, " looking out of its palimpsest prison 
through the bars of a later writing," was brought 
more fully into the light. 

The author of " Parchments of the Faith " closes 
his account, written in 1 894, by saying : " Unfortu- 
nately for these pages, the publication of the full 
results of the study of the document is delayed." 



1 82 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

The want thus referred to has been supplied 
by the article of Professor Harris in .the Con- 
temporary. He tells us that he and his assis- 
tants " have been able to restore from the actual 
MS., with the assistance of Mrs. Lewis's photo- 
graphs, the greater part of the four Gospels from 
the faded writing in which they appear ; and this 
we have done, often for whole pages without the 
loss of a word or a letter. . . . We have, there- 
fore, a transcript of the four Gospels in Syriac, 
dating from a very early period, say the fifth 
century, and representing not unfaithfully a 
translation which must have been made far back 
in the second century. Examination shows that 
it is closely connected with the Syriac version 
which was edited by Cureton in 1859, and which 
is called after his name. There is not the least 
doubt that, as far as Syriac Gospels are concerned, 
a text has been recovered superior in antiquity to 
anything yet known, and one that often agrees 
with all that is most ancient in Greek MSS. ; a 
text which the advanced critics will at once ac- 
knowledge to be, after allowance has been made 
for a few serious blemishes, superior in purity to 
all extant copies, with a very few exceptions ; and 
at the same time a text which by its dogmatic 
tendencies will arrest the interest of theologians 
of every school of thought." 

We are naturally anxious to know the nature 



"THE NEW SYRIAC GOSPELS" 1 83 

of a set of " blemishes " in a text of the New 
Testament which Professor Harris considers so old 
and, in general, unusually true to what the best 
MS. authorities attest as the original text. 

It has been said that, though a vast number ol 
changes were made in producing the Revised 
Version of the English Bible, not a single doc- 
trine is at all affected by the revision. This can- 
not be said of the text which was discovered by 
Mrs. Lewis. Should that be followed, belief in 
the cardinal fact of Christianity — the incarnation 
of Christ, our Lord — would be overthrown. It 
is evidently the design of this copy of the Gospels 
to do this. In the words of Professor Harris : 
"But the most original feature in our MS., and 
perhaps the most archaic of its peculiarities, is the 
suggestion on its very first page of another ver- 
sion of the birth of our Lord, by readings which 
definitely and designedly assign to Joseph, the 
husband of Mary, the paternity of Jesus." 

I need not dwell on this, except to say that the 
theory of a mistake as the explanation of the in- 
troduction of these changes into the first chapter 
of Matthew is untenable. The changes are in- 
troduced too systematically to admit of any such 
explanation. They are such as these : Verse 16 : 
" Joseph [to whom was espoused the Virgin 
Mary] begat Jesus, who is called Christ." Verse 
21 \ " She shall bear thee a son," etc. Verse 25 : 



1 84 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

" And she bare him a son, and he called His name 
Jesus." 

Professor Harris reminds us of the formula, 
" When the cause of a variant is known the vari- 
ant itself will disappear." The cause of the 
variant here is very clearly seen. It is the settled 
purpose to discredit the miraculous birth by 
which Christ became incarnate. As Professor 
Harrip says, it is evident that " an enemy hath 
done this." Who is that enemy? 

Here our saint with his search-light comes to 
our aid. In the " Refutation of all Heresies," 
book vii., chapter xxi., we have the following: 

" But a certain Cerinthus, himself being dis- 
ciplined in the teaching of the Egyptians, asserted 
that the world was not made by the principal 
Deity, but by some virtue that was an offshoot 
from that Power which is above all things, and 
which yet is ignorant of the God that is above all. 

" And he supposed that Jesus was not gener- 
ated from a virgin, but that He was born son of 
Joseph and Mary, just in a manner similar to the 
rest of men; and that [Jesus] was more just and 
more wise [than all the human race]. 

"And [Cerinthus alleges] that, after the bap- 
tism [of our Lord], Christ, in the form of a dove, 
came down upon Him from that absolute sover- 
eignty which is above all things." 

Thus we find Cerinthian adoptionism endeavor- 



"THE NEIV SYRIAC GOSPELS" 185 

ing to drive the doctrine of the divine conception 
and incarnation of Christ from the Scriptures 
by corrupting the text. 

While we shudder at the horrible wickedness 
of such speculations about a matter which has 
been revealed in the Scriptures, we have one 
reason to be thankful that this text of the Gospels 
has come to light. Setting aside this variant in 
the "nativity" passages, the text is an excellent 
one, and very old. This heresy that has stamped 
its cloven foot upon it has, in doing so, helped to 
fix the date of its origin. Says Professor Harris, 
" It need not be the very Gospel used in Cerinthian 
circles, but it is certainly sufficiently like to it to 
share with the Gospel spoken of by Epiphanius in 
a common designation." Epiphanius, as well as 
Irenaeus and our own Hippolytus, besides others, 
tells us of this heresy of Cerinthus. And Cerin- 
thits was a contemporary of the Apostle John. 
The tradition that John turned his back upon 
him in Ephesus, in horror at his impious doc- 
trines, may or may not be true; but there is 
nothing improbable in it. 

The gentle John became a very Boanerges, 
even in his old age, when some began to deny 
that "Jesus Christ had come in the flesh." The 
heresy of Docetism is supposed to be referred to. 
But is not Cerinthianism a twin brother to that ? 
Cerinthus held that Christ only abode with the 



1 86 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PPOLYTUS 

man Jesus for a time, and deserted Him at the 
time of the crucifixion. Thus Cerinthus en- 
deavors, like many in our own times, to eliminate 
from Christianity that which is its central fact, 
the atoning death of our Redeemer, the efficacy 
of which depends on the fact which even the 
heathen centurion who had charge of the cruci- 
fixion was constrained to acknowledge in the 
words, " Surely this was the Son of God." 

It seems plain that a version bearing a distinct 
Cerinthian character must have been made at the 
time when the Cerinthian heresy was propagated, 
as it was evidently intended to be an instrument 
for its propagation. 

Such marks may very generally be relied on in 
settling the date of a document. They bear an 
analogy to the geological record, the " testimony 
of the rocks," in the undesigned and imperishable 
character of such a record ; but they are much 
less liable to misinterpretation. We may take an 
illustration from times much nearer our own, 
and be able to see more clearly how dates are 
fixed in this way. 

Suppose that, some hundreds or thousands of 
years hence, there should be found, among 
Christians as ignorant of our English tongue as 
we are of the Syriac of the second century, a 
copy of an English Bible in which eminent schol- 
ars among them, who should understand this old 



"THE NEIV SYRIAC GOSPELS" 1 87 

language (as some among us now know the Syr- 
iac), had observed some remarkable peculiarities 
which clearly differentiated it from other English 
versions with which they were acquainted — such 
peculiarities, for instance, as these : 

Acts xiv. 23: "Ordained to them priests in 
every church." 1 Timothy v. 1 7 : " Let the priests 
that rule well be esteemed worthy of double 
honor." Titus i. 5: "And shouldest ordain 
priests in every city." James v. 14: "Is any 
man sick among you ? let him bring in the priests 
of the church," etc. And then such as these : 
Matthew iii. 1, 2: "And in those days cometh 
John the Baptist, preaching in the desert of 
Judea, and saying, Do PENANCE : for the king- 
dom of heaven," etc. Mark vi. 12 : " And going 
forth, they preached that men should do penance " 
Luke xiii. 3 : " But, unless you shall do penance, 
you shall all likewise perish." Luke xvi. 30: 
" No, father Abraham : but if one went unto 
them from the dead, they will do penance" etc. 

Such scholars would naturally ask, " How is it 
that the word ' elder,' or ' presbyter,' found in 
other English versions, the equivalent of the 
Greek presbnteros, is here replaced by this word 
' priest,' which in English designates the men who 
offered sacrifices under the Jewish law, or minis- 
tered at heathen altars, the equivalent of which 
in Greek is hiereus f And what process is this 



1 88 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPO LYTUS 

which is put under the name of ' doing penance,' 
and which is made essential for the pardon of sin 
and escape from ' perishing ' ? " 

Then if these scholars, instead of beginning to 
theorize, should go to investigating facts, and 
should turn the search-light of history on the Brit- 
ish Isles, where English is the common tongue, 
and on the continent of Europe, they would 
find that in the sixteenth century a great move- 
ment, called the Reformation, took place. They 
would find that this Reformation was accomplished 
chiefly by giving the Bible to the people in their 
own language, and that when the waves of the 
great movement began to agitate England there 
was felt a great want. The people must have 
that Bible which had so roused the Germans. 
Then came a period of Bible translation. God 
raised up a wonderful man, William Tyndale, to 
give the Bible to the English people. Other 
English translations were made with various 
special aims, of which their pages bear evident 
traces ; but, whatever patterns may have been 
wrought into the fabric, Tyndale's constituted 
the warp and woof of them all. 

Church and state in England were arrayed 
against the movement. Many lives were sacri- 
ficed, Tyndale's among the rest. But the people 
would have the Word of God, in spite of stake 
and gibbet. 



"THE NEIV SYRIAC GOSPELS" 1 89 

The search-light of history would reveal a rapid 
progress of the Reformation through the circula- 
tion of the Scriptures, so that the majority of the 
nation became its advocates. 

These investigators would naturally inquire, 
" Why was a reformation needed, and what 
brought about that state of things which called 
so loudly for it?" "Who took away this Bible 
for which there is now such a demand on the 
part of the people?" 

As they turn the search-light back upon the 
earlier centuries, they find that this state of 
things was brought about chiefly by the minis- 
ters of the gospel being replaced by priests, who, 
instead of pointing to the great sacrifice of Cal- 
vary, turned the Lord's Supper into a sacrifice, 
and bade those whom they would allow to par- 
take of it believe in it as the very body and blood 
of Christ. 

Then it would be found that these priests 
gained more and more ghostly power, and formed 
themselves into ranks and orders, till at last one 
of them was placed on a throne, and kings and 
emperors were made his servants. 

Then the question would arise, " How did these 
priests accomplish this wonderful feat?" The 
search-light of history would reveal the answer. 
It would show these men pretending to stand 
between men and their God, and to be able to 



190 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

forgive their sins. It would dart its rays into 
thousands of dark cuddies called confessionals, 
and would show in each a priest sitting, while a 
penitent man or woman or child knelt and told 
to the priest the innermost secrets of heart and 
life. Then the priest would be seen prescribing 
a "penance" for each penitent, and, whether 
doing the penance involved self-torture, or the 
resigning of possessions to the church and going 
to a convent or monastery, the priest found the 
requirement, " Do penance or perish," a powerful 
instrument in his hands, and by it brought down 
king and peasant. 

Now, when the Reformation began in England, 
and the English Bible made plain the way of 
salvation through Christ alone, the " one Media- 
tor " between God and man, vast multitudes 
turned away from the priests and confessionals, 
and, instead of " doing penance," repented of 
their sins, and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
that they might be saved. 

Now our investigators would find that the 
period of English Bible translation, in connection 
with this great movement, the Reformation, be- 
gan with the publication of Tyndale's translation 
of the New Testament in 1526, and of the whole 
Bible in 1535, and ended with the publication of 
King James's version in 161 1. 

They might never have turned their search- 



"THE NEW SYRIAC GOSPELS" 191 

light on Rheims or Douay ; yet, from the peculi- 
arities of the version which had in it the " priest " 
and " do penance " features, they would have no 
hesitation in saying, "A priest hath done this." 
They would feel sure, too, that it was done dur- 
ing this period of English Bible translation ex- 
tending from 1526 to 161 1. Having found that 
it had been for centuries the policy of the priests 
to keep the Bible from the people, and that for 
this purpose they had kept it locked up in a dead 
language, they would see that when they now 
translated it into the English language they did 
it because they felt obliged to change their policy 
to some extent, though not the principle underly- 
ing it. Circumstances forced them to do it. By 
the translation of the Bible into English the light 
had been turned on, and the people as they read 
began to find the scales falling from their eyes. 
They saw that in the New Testament there was 
nothing about priests and penances in the Chris- 
tian church. The priests and sacrifices belonged 
to the preparatory dispensation of those types and 
shadows which pointed to Christ, the great High 
Priest, who should offer for our redemption the 
sacrifice of Himself. " So Christ was once offered 
to bear the sins of many " (Heb. ix. 28). " For by 
one offering He hath perfected forever them that 
are sanctified." The people were rapidly learning 
this great truth, and were turning away from the 



192 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

altars where pretended priests were offering an 
endless succession of pretended propitiatory sacri- 
fices of the mass. 

What shall the priests do ? They make a des- 
perate resolve. If these things are not in the 
Bible they will put them there. Hence comes 
the " priest " and " penance " version of Rheims 
and Douay. 

It was an artful scheme to use the very sledge- 
hammer that had broken the bars of the people's 
prison for forging their fetters anew. If they 
must know of the Bible from English translations, 
they shall have one that shall teach them of 
priests and penances. " For by this craft we 
have our wealth." 

Thus the Douay version, if in a future age it 
should be found without colophon and date, could 
easily be identified and dated by the finger-marks 
of the priests. The close of the sixteenth or the 
beginning of the seventeenth century would be 
set down as its birth-hour. 

Just so the new codex of the Syriac Gospels 
discovered by Mrs. Lewis at Mount Sinai is 
marked, by the footprints of Cerinthianism in it, 
as belonging to the period of this heresy. 

The connection traced by Professor Harris be- 
tween the new Syriac Gospels and the Curetonian 
Syriac text gives another indication of the very 
early origin of the text of the former. This 



"THE NEW SYRIAC GOSPELS" 1 93 

connection is of such a kind as to indicate quite 
clearly the superior antiquity of the newly dis- 
covered text. 

The Curetonian emphasizes the virginity of 
Mary by changes in the very text which Cerin- 
thus or his followers changed in the endeavor to 
make the " nativity " passages teach, not the su- 
pernatural incarnation of Christ, but the natural 
birth, by ordinary generation, of Jesus. The 
changes are such as these: In Matthew i. 25, in- 
stead of " took his wife," the Curetonian has 
" took Mary." In i. 20, the words of the angel, 
" fear not to take to thee Mary thy wife" are 
changed to " fear not to take to thee Mary thine 
espoused." In i. 19, "Joseph, her husband" ap- 
pears simply as "Joseph." 

Hence it seems clear, as Professor Harris tells 
us, that the Curetonian text is the result, as to 
this feature, of an endeavor to correct the Cerin- 
thian error. 

Of course the text on which corrections are 
made must be older than the corrections. A 
document must be older than a corrected edition of 
itself. It seems almost certain, then, that the 
text of the Gospels discovered at Mount Sinai is 
one of which the Curetonian is a correction ; 
therefore it must be older than the Curetonian. 
As the " Diatessaron " of Tatian shows, accord- 
ing to Professor Harris, a connection with the 



194 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

Curetonian, the inference is that it, too, is more 
recent than the newly discovered Cerinthian text. 
This makes it look as if the latter was the text 
used in Cerinthian circles. 

Now this Cerinthian text was a corruption of 
an original, doctored in the " nativity " passages 
to sustain the adoptionist theory. This text in 
which the changes in these passages were made 
must, of course, have been older than the cor- 
rupted Cerinthian text. The passages changed 
make the text in these places inconsistent with 
itself in other places, and thus point to an older, 
self-consistent, unmutilated text. 

We find, then, in these newly discovered Gos- 
pels, another indication of the existence of this 
part, at least, of the New Testament within the 
first century. 

Our quest is well-nigh ended. There has been 
no effort to present the whole body of evidence 
of the genuineness of the New Testament Scrip- 
tures. We have only traveled through the ob- 
scure ways of this comparatively little-known age 
by the help of our saint's search-light. 

We have found, even by an examination of the 
ground on which this light falls, clear and cumu- 
lative evidence that the New Testament came 
down from apostolic times, and that from the first 
it was received as the authority to which all 
parties appealed. 



"THE NEIV SYRIAC GOSPELS" 1 95 

Our first excursion for research was along the 
path of Hippolytus's spiritual ancestry, and we 
found Irenaeus, his teacher, quoting in his extant 
works every book of the New Testament, with 
the exception of two very brief epistles, while 
Polycarp, the teacher of Irenaeus, in the only 
writing of his which is extant, quotes the New 
Testament so extensively that the letter is a mo- 
saic made up, in large part, of gems from the 
New Testament writings. And Polycarp was 
contemporary with the Apostle John for almost 
forty years. This of itself would be sufficient ; 
but we find corroborative testimony. 

Our second excursion was by the way of the 
Gnostic heresies to which Hippolytus introduces 
us, and we found Valentinus and Basilides (the 
latter a younger contemporary of John) quoting 
the New Testament writings and appealing to 
them as the recognized authority in religious 
discussion, while we found Heracleon, a disciple 
of Valentinus, actually writing a commentary in 
which he shows a strict view of the inspiration of 
the New Testament. 

Our third inquiry was concerning Tatian, of 
whom Hippolytus speaks, and in his newly dis- 
covered " Diatessaron " we found a harmony of 
the four Gospels in which the most punctilious 
regard was paid to the very words and phrases 
of the evangelists, as Tatian interweaves them 



196 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

into a continuous narrative. This indicates that 
these Gospels had long been accepted as the gen- 
uine " memoirs of the apostles " concerning the 
Lord Jesus, of which Justin Martyr tells the 
Emperor Antoninus Pius that they were used in 
Christian worship along with the Old Testament 
Scriptures. 

And at last, guided by our saint's light, we 
found Cerinthus, a contemporary of John, teach- 
ing that our Lord was born of human parents, by 
ordinary generation, and lo! there rises from its 
tomb on Mount Sinai a codex of the four Gospels 
with the footprints of this heresy in it. 

Thus we find these four roads converging to a 
point within the apostolic age. As we approach 
it, first from one direction and then from an- 
other, we behold, rising in the distance there, 
that sublime structure from which has shone 
through the ages a celestial light, and from whose 
threshold flows a life-giving stream — the finished 
temple of divine revelation. 



XVII 

THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE FIRST 
CENTURY 






197 



XVII 

THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE FIRST CENTURY 

No one acquainted with the subject will con- 
tend that the books of the New Testament were 
gathered together into a volume by supernatural 
means as soon as they were written, and that as 
soon as the last word was indited every church was 
found in possession of a completed New Testament. 

While the New Testament writings are, as we 
verily believe, of supernatural origin and char- 
acter, "inspired," — God-breathed (Theopneustai), 
— they were produced through natural agencies, 
were called forth, as some of the epistles espe- 
cially show, by certain exigencies, and bear the 
mark of the natural powers, tastes, and culture 
of their authors. The distribution of them was 
doubtless by natural means too, and undoubtedly 
some churches received some of them before other 
churches. The multiplication of copies was ac- 
complished by the slow and tedious process of 
writing and was far from instantaneous. Dr. B. B. 
Warfield, in the Presbyterian Quarterly, April, 
1895, we ^ describes the process as follows: 
199 



200 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

" The Bible was circulated only in hand copies 
slowly and painfully made, and an incomplete 
copy, obtained, say, at Ephesus in A.D. 68, would 
be likely to remain for many years the Bible of 
the church to which it was conveyed, and might, 
indeed, become the parent of other copies, incom- 
plete like itself, and thus the means of providing 
a whole district with incomplete Bibles. Thus, 
when we inquire after the history of the New 
Testament canon, we need to distinguish such 
questions as these: I. When was the New Tes- 
tament canon completed? 2. When did any one 
church acquire a completed canon? 3. When 
did the completed canon, the complete Bible, 
obtain universal circulation and acceptance? 
4. On what ground and evidence did the churches 
with incomplete Bibles accept the remaining books 
when they were made known to them?" He 
answers the first question thus: "The canon of 
the New Testament was completed when the last 
authoritative book was given to any church by 
the apostles." His conclusion on the whole mat- 
ter is: " But from the time of Irenaeus down, the 
church at large had the whole canon as we now 
possess it." 

Pursuing the four ways made plain by the 
search-light of our saint, we have at each ap- 
proach to the apostolic age found the New Tes- 
tament already in existence. We have looked, 



IN THE FIRST CENTURY 201 

as it were, from four standpoints on the verge of 
the first century, and each time we have caught 
a glimpse of this divinely erected edifice. Have 
we been mistaken ? Was it a mere mirage, a re- 
flection back into the first century of what only 
grew to its completion late in the second ? 

Whether what we have seen is a mirage or a 
reality will be best determined by a close ap- 
proach and a careful examination. This exam- 
ination we must make for ourselves, as the results 
have so important a personal interest for us and 
a mistake would be so disastrous ; but in making 
the approach we need not disdain such assistance 
as that of Renan and Baur, men who have care- 
fully examined this region and who should be 
competent guides for this purpose, so far as the 
possession of the requisite information goes. 

Renan says of the four epistles of Paul which 
occur first in our New Testament, those to the 
Romans, the Corinthians, and the Galatians, that 
they are " incontestables et incontestees " (" in- 
disputable and undisputed"), and also that " les 
critiques les plus severes, tels que Christien Baur, 
les acceptent sans objection " (" the most exact- 
ing critics, such as Christian Baur, accept them 
without objection ").* 

As these four epistles are admitted by the most 

* "St. Paul," pp. v., vi. Quoted by Dr. Wace in " Evidential 
Conclusions from the Four Greater Epistles of Paul," pp. 3, 4. 



202 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

advanced critics as the writings of the Apostle 
Paul, we need not discuss their authenticity. 
Taking our stand, then, in this part of the New 
Testament, we may at least begin our examina- 
tion of this part of what Christians hold to be the 
completion of God's revelation. 

What must strike any one as remarkable about 
these four epistles is that they proceed upon a 
certain set of facts, that these facts are many of 
them altogether out of the mere natural order, 
and that they all cluster about a PERSON who is 
entirely unlike any historical character. We find 
the acknowledged writer of these four epistles 
showing every conceivable sign of the utmost 
sincerity as he unfolds these facts, and deduces 
certain doctrines from them, and lays down cer- 
tain rules of practical conduct for those to whom 
he is writing, while he evidently accepts these 
doctrines and rules as the norm of his own think- 
ing and living. 

Now, as we look further into the New Testa- 
ment, we see that these facts which Paul presup- 
poses and builds upon in these epistles are given 
in detail in four other books called "Gospels," 
written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and 
chiefly by the first three of these. The very 
natural presumption is that these Gospels, or some 
of them at least, had been written when Paul 
wrote these epistles which are acknowledged to be 



IN THE FIRST CENTURY 203 

his. It is not claimed at all that this conclusion 
is absolutely necessary, but it is certainly reason- 
able and probable. The use which Paul makes 
of these facts concerning Christ implies that he 
had definite and full information about them, and 
we find such information in these Gospels. 

It seems clear, then, that as these facts about 
Christ underlie all the teaching of these epistles, 
and as the system called Christianity (which is 
absolutely unique) is precisely the same as pre- 
sented in these epistles and in the life, death, 
resurrection, ascension, and teachings of Christ 
recorded in these Gospels, it is incredible that the 
Gospels could have originated in a later age, as 
the Tubingen school contended. 

Here we can again allow M. Renan to take us 
by the hand and lead us into these rooms which 
we have been viewing from other apartments, 
though we protest in advance against any con- 
clusions he might wish us to adopt as to what 
we see in them. We prefer to see and conclude 
for ourselves. We will take his hand, but keep 
our eyes. Renan acknowledges that the Gospel 
of Luke is in all probability genuine. He says : 
" As to Luke, doubt is scarcely possible. 
The author of this Gospel is certainly the same as 
the author of the Acts of the Apostles. Now the 
author of the Acts seems to be a companion of 
St. Paul, a character which accords completely 



204 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

with St. Luke."* He concludes: "We think, 
therefore/that the author of the third Gospel and 
of the Acts is in all reality Luke, the disciple of 
Paul." 

Baur, by his doctrine of " tendencies," tried to 
make the world believe that our Gospels represent 
the stages of religious discussion of the first and 
second centuries, and Strauss, by his " mythical " 
theory, also endeavored to give them a late origin 
and a spurious character. But Renan, while shar- 
ing their hostility to Christianity as of divine and 
supernatural character, is constrained by plain 
evidence to acknowledge the genuineness of Luke, 
though he holds that all statements implying the 
supernatural are legendary. Of him Dr. Wace 
says :f 

" No one doubts his perfect familiarity with 
the whole range of criticism represented by such 
names as Strauss and Baur, and no one questions 
his disposition to give full weight to every objec- 
tion which that criticism can urge. Even without 
presuming that he is prejudiced on either one 
side or the other, it will be admitted on all hands 
that he is more favorably disposed than otherwise 
to such criticism as we have to meet. When, 
therefore, with this full knowledge of the litera- 
ture of the subject, such a writer comes to the 

* Preface to Renan's " Vie de Jesus." 

t " The Authenticity of the Four Gospels," p. 17. 



IN THE FIRST CENTURY 205 

conclusion that the criticism in question has en- 
tirely failed to make good its case on a point like 
that of the authorship of St. Luke's Gospel, we 
are at least justified in concluding that critical 
objections do not possess the weight which un- 
believers or skeptics are wont to assign to them. 
M. Renan, in a word, is no adequate witness to 
the Gospels, but he is a very significant witness 
as to the value of modern critical objections to 
them." 

But Renan not only acknowledges that the 
evidences of Luke's authorship of the Gospel 
which has his name attached to it and of the Acts 
of the Apostles are clear, but says he : " To sum 
up, I admit the four canonical Gospels as serious 
documents. They all go back to the age which 
followed the death of Jesus," etc.* 

While Renan's theory that the supernatural 
cannot be admitted led him to reject the Gospels 
as the divine revelation which we believe them 
to be, his knowledge of the evidences constrained 
him to acknowledge that they were " serious 
documents " and therefore not forgeries, and that 
they were written at the time when we suppose 
them to have been written, in "the age which 
followed the death of Jesus." 

When we come to examine the Gospels them- 
selves we find everything to indicate that they 

* Preface to " Vie de Jesus," p. lxxxi. 



206 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

originated at this time and that they were written 
by the authors whose names they bear. If a 
book has always borne the name of a writer from 
its first introduction, and there is no reason to 
believe that there is any intention to deceive in 
the matter, we do not hesitate to believe that the 
person whose name the book bears is its author. 
If we are asked long afterward to believe that 
such a person was not the author, but that some 
one else wrote it, the one making such a demand 
is under obligation to furnish proof of what he 
avers. 

The Gospels have borne the names of their re- 
puted authors from their first appearance, so far 
as we can learn. Indeed, everything is in favor 
of the supposition that the persons whose names 
they bear are those to whom they have been at- 
tributed from the first. We have seen the clear 
testimony of Irenaeus, who could certainly have 
learned from his teacher, Polycarp, the facts of 
the case. Polycarp could not have been mistaken, 
for the last Gospel was written in his lifetime and 
by his own teacher, according to the statement 
of Irenaeus. 

The well-known testimony of Papias of Hierap- 
olis, whom Irenaeus calls " a hearer of John and 
a companion of Polycarp," is clear and explicit as 
to the authorship of the Gospels of Matthew and 
Mark. 



IN THE FIRST CENTURY 207 

Eusebius* quotes Papias as saying, " Matthew 
composed the oracles in the Hebrew tongue, and 
each one interpreted them as he could." 

This shows that the first Gospel was attributed to 
Matthew from the beginning. The use of the word 
" oracles," too, reminds one of the expression of 
Paul in Romans iii. 1, where he evidently means 
the Holy Scriptures. Papias, it would seem, 
then, instead of referring only to the discourses 
of our Lord, intends to rank the Gospel of Mat- 
thew with the rest of the Holy Scriptures. 

Of Mark Papias says : " Mark, having become 
the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately 
everything that he remembered. . . . So, then, 
Mark made no mistake while he thus wrote down 
some things as he remembered them, for he made 
it his one care not to omit anything that he heard 
or to set down any false statement." 

Thus we see that these two Gospels bearing the 
names of Matthew and Mark are attributed to them 
as their authors by a man who was a younger 
contemporary of the last of the apostles. 

Now, as we turn to examine the contents of 
those books whose traditionary authorship, from 
the very age in which they were produced and 
for a long time after it, was undisputed, f we shall 

* " Hist. Eccl.," book iii., chap, xxxix. 

t The case of the Alogi no real exception. See Neander's 
" Hist, of Ch.," p. 374 (Rose's trans.). 



208 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPO LYTUS 

find them exhibiting several characteristics which 
confirm the tradition concerning them and attest 
their genuineness. 

There is one thing about the first three Gospels 
which stamps them as productions of the period 
preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in the 
year 70. In all of them there is recorded that 
remarkable prophecy of our Saviour about the 
destruction of Jerusalem, His own coming, and 
the end of the world. 

These events are all evidently in the future 
when these Gospels are penned. The prophecy, 
recorded with some variations of language in the 
different Gospels, has one marked characteristic 
in each and all of them. That characteristic makes 
it very difficult to interpret. It is this : the future 
events are so described that it is not absolutely 
certain in some expressions which of the events 
named is referred to. Indeed, some parts of the 
prophecy seem to be capable of bearing different 
senses, in one of which it will be applicable to one 
of these events, while in another it would apply to 
another of them. Like many other prophecies, 
it seems to have the " springing and germinant " 
quality of Bacon's celebrated aphorism, having 
different fulfilments in various ages and " reach- 
ing its height and fullness in some one age." 

It is the oak-in-the-acorn principle. Some of 
the first fulfilments may be as insignificant, when 



IN THE FIRST CENTURY 209 

compared to the "height and fullness " which it is 
to reach, as the mustard-seed compared to the 
future " tree " in whose branches the birds will 
build. These great events are in this prophecy- 
foreshortened and apparently intermingled, and 
this characteristic marks the date of the writing 
as preceding that first fulfilment, which occurred 
in the destruction of the Holy City. If it had al- 
ready occurred the writer could not but have seen 
that it was a different thing historically from the 
second advent and the end of the world. 

To use a very plain and homely illustration, 
when we are traveling along a road beside which 
a telegraph runs, the poles ahead of us may seem 
very close together, and from certain positions we 
do not see the spaces between them; but when 
we pass one of these, we see from our changed 
point of view that there is a wide interval between 
it and the next one ahead, against which it just 
now seemed to be leaning. These writers evi- 
dently had not passed the first of the events, and 
hence the foreshortening and commingling of 
these great events with much in common in great 
principles, but widely divided in time. 

When we come to examine the fourth Gospel 
we find that it is written as if by an eye-witness 
of much that is related, while the author, evi- 
dently from delicacy, often studiously refrains 
from mentioning his own name. This is espe- 



2IO THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

daily noticeable in his mention (i. 37) of "the 
two disciples " who heard John the Baptist say as 
he looked on Jesus, " Behold the Lamb of God ! " 
" One of the two," he informs us, " was Andrew, 
Simon Peter's brother." He does not mention 
that he himself was the other, but only leaves it 
to be inferred. The author was evidently the 
questioner at the table as to who the traitor was, 
but he does not mention his name. Instead of 
this, he draws the ever-memorable picture in 
which those who love the Lord Jesus have ever 
since recognized him. " Now there was leaning 
on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus 
loved." At the cross, in that tenderest of all the 
scenes about it, the author's name does not ap- 
pear. " When Jesus therefore saw His mother, 
and the disciple standing by, whom He loved," 
are his words. At the sepulcher Peter is named, 
but he himself is "the other disciple." At the 
Sea of Galilee, in the wonderful scene of the mi- 
raculous draft of fishes, and the restoration of 
Peter by the risen Lord, he is still " the disciple 
whom Jesus loved." And in the next to the last 
verse of the Gospel we are told, " This is the dis- 
ciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote 
these things : and we know that his testimony is 
true." He is still the unnamed eye-witness. But 
the veil of delicacy which John uses does not and 
was not intended to obscure his authorship of this 



IN THE FIRST CENTURY 211 

Gospel, as this distinct and clear attestation at the 
close of it shows.* 

Thus, while on entering this central apartment 
with its four portals we saw over the lintels the 
superscriptions, " The Gospel according to Mat- 
thew," " according to Mark," " according to 
Luke," " according to John," we find, as we come 
within and examine the handiwork and the ma- 
terial, indications that this structure was builded 
in " the age which follotved the deatJi of Jesus" 
and by those who were " eye-witnesses of His 
majesty," or their companions, to whom, with the 
vividness of personal knowledge, they communi- 
cated the wonderful facts and words which form 
the foundation-stones and unearthly splendors of 
that monument of divine grace and love for lost 
men which we call " The New Testament." 

There are personal reminiscences like these : 
" We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only 
begotten of the Father;" "That which was from 
the beginning, which we have heard, which we 
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked 
upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of 
life; . . . that which we have seen and heard declare 
we unto you." It is all in the manner of another 
eye-witness who says, "For He received from God 

* The supposition of Godet and others, that these are the 
words of editors, is plausible ; but the style of the last chapter 
proclaims it John's. 



2 12 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

the Father honor and glory, when there came such 
a voice to Him from the excellent glory, This is 
My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. 
And this voice which came from heaven we heard, 
when we were with Him in the holy mount" (2 
Pet. i. 17, 18). 

The omissions in the fourth Gospel can be ex- 
plained only by supposing that it was written 
after the other three and that the author knew 
their contents. The omission of an account of 
the selection of the twelve apostles is one of these. 
Christ's Galilean ministry is omitted, while accounts 
of five sojourns in Jerusalem and Judea are given. 
The extended discourses at and after the institu- 
tion of the Lord's Supper are given, but the Ser- 
mon on the Mount and the great body of the 
parables are omitted. The account of the institu- 
tion of this sacrament is omitted, while the scene 
of it is portrayed at length, and many occurrences 
and sayings omitted by the other evangelists are 
inserted here. This shows quite plainly that the 
author of this Gospel knew that the things omitted 
had been already recorded. This is no doubt- 
ful evidence (and the evidence of silence is 
often the most convincing) of an apostle that the 
synoptic Gospels were already written when he 
wrote. 

The closer our examination of all these Gospels, 
and other books of the New Testament, the clearer 






IN THE FIRST CENTURY 213 

will be the evidence that they were written in the 
apostolic age. 

The first four epistles, Romans, 1 and 2 Corin- 
thians, and Galatians, are allowed even by the 
most exacting critics, even by F. Christian Baur 
himself, to have been written by Paul. We find 
that the rest which bear his name also bear clear 
marks of the same hand. No writings ever more 
unmistakably bore the impress of their author. 
The claim in the epistles, unvarying tradition, the 
style, and the "undesigned coincidence" with the 
Acts of the Apostles, unite in testifying to Paul 
as their author. But in addition to this, Paul, the 
unique character that he is, is seen and felt every- 
where in them. 

Phidias is said to have executed that wonder 
of art, the shield of Athena, in such a way that 
portraits of his patron, Pericles, and of himself, 
the sculptor, also, were seen on it. In all the 
Pauline epistles the lineaments of Christ shine 
forth, but everywhere in them we find Paul ever 
unconsciously revealing himself also, in the act of 
portraying his Master. 

The abrupt conclusion of the Acts of the Apos- 
tles indicates that Luke, of whom Paul said, " Only 
Luke is with me," perished with the apostle. The 
sudden breaking off without recording Paul's mar- 
tyrdom is most naturally explained by supposing 
that the Acts was written before that event. 



214 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

Without further particularizing as to the evi- 
dence of the authorship of the books of the 
New Testament, it is sufficient to draw attention 
for a moment to the way in which they fit into 
the history of the time in which they claim to 
have been written, to show that they could have 
been written at no other period. 

For one thing, the political peculiarities of the 
period covered by the transactions related in the 
New Testament were such that no writer could 
have forged the accounts at a later time without 
falling into many mistakes. The government of 
the country was administered in five distinct forms 
during this period. Even the astute and clear- 
headed Tacitus seems to have been unable suc- 
cessfully to thread the mazes of a situation so 
complicated, and the most skilful forger who in 
the second century should have attempted the 
telling of such a story as that of the Gospels and 
the Acts would have tripped at almost every step. 
How is it with the New Testament writers ? Here 
is the answer of one who has examined the mat- 
ter most carefully : 

" The writers of the New Testament nowhere 
betray any perplexity. They mark, quite inci- 
dentally and without the slightest trace of strain 
or effort, the various phases, extraordinary as they 
were, of the civil government of Palestine. Thus 
at the era of the advent we (i) find the country 



IN THE FIRST CENTURY 2 1$ 

subject to the sole government of Herod the 
Great (Matt. ii. 1 ; Luke i. 5) ; then (2) we have 
his dominions partitioned among his sons, while 
one, Archelaus, reigns over Judea with the title of 
£///£• (Matt. ii. 22) ; then (3) we see Judea reduced to 
the condition of a Roman province, while Galilee, 
Iturea, and Trachonitis continue under native 
princes (Luke iii. 1); then (4) in the person of 
Herod Agrippa I. we have the old kingdom of 
Palestine restored (Acts xii. 1); and finally (5) 
we observe the whole country reduced under 
Roman rule, and Roman procurators (Felix, Acts 
xxiii. 24; Festus, Acts xxiv. 27) reestablished, 
while a certain degree of deference is paid to 
Herod Agrippa II., to whom Festus refers Paul's 
case as presenting special difficulties." * 

But this is only the vestibule of a great laby- 
rinth in which none but persons living in the lands 
and in the time of which the books of the New 
Testament give us accounts could possibly have 
avoided being hopelessly confused. 

No attempt will here be made to exhibit in 
detail the many complications which would have 
furnished snares and pitfalls for any forger who 
might have attempted in the second century to 
write such accounts. We can only take a pass- 
ing glance at the situation. The writer just 

* " Historical Illustrations of the New Testament Scriptures," 
by Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D., p. 6. 



2 16 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

named has summed up the difficulties which such 
an attempt would have met under five heads : 

i. The political condition of Palestine (just 
mentioned). 

2. Roman emperors and administrators. 

3. Jewish kings and princes. 

4. Condition of the Jewish nation. 

5. The Greek and Roman world. 

Under each of these heads there is an intricate 
array of particulars. 

Many with a zeal against Christianity, which 
sharpened their vision for the discovery of mis- 
takes, have endeavored to show that the writers 
of the New Testament have in some cases fallen 
into error, but a fuller investigation and the light 
of archaeological discoveries have shown that their 
zeal has been " not according to knowledge." A 
notable case in point is that of the " enrolment " 
under Augustus, which providentially caused our 
Lord's mother to go with Joseph to Bethlehem, 
their " own city," where our Lord was born ac- 
cording to the prophecy which assigned the city 
of David as the birthplace of the Messiah. 

Much has been written to prove that Luke was 
guilty of an anachronism, because Cyrenius (or 
Quirinus) became governor of Syria when our 
Lord was about ten years old. But, as Maclear 
says, " There has been no serious refutation of the 
view, first developed by Zumpt, that Quirinus 






IN THE FIRST CENTURY 21 J 

was twice governor, once in B.C. 4, when he began 
the census, and once in A.D. 6, when he carried 
it to completion." Suetonius tells of three such 
enrolments in the reign of Augustus.* 

In another case Luke has been accused of 
making a mistake. He calls Sergius Paulus the 
" proconsul " (" deputy" in the Authorized Ver- 
sion ") of Cyprus, while many scholars contended 
that Cyprus was an imperial province and that 
the title of Sergius Paulus was "propretor." 
Closer examination, however, has shown that the 
emperor had transferred Cyprus to the control 
of the senate, so that the governor's title would 
properly be "proconsul." Luke's accuracy in 
the matter has been demonstrated, too, by the 
discovery of coins of the time, on which is the 
name of the Emperor Claudius, and the title of 
the governor as "proconsul" Besides this, an in- 
scription has been discovered bearing the names 
of two other governors of Cyprus, and in it the 
title is "proconsul." Thus Luke is thoroughly 
proved to have been right. 

When we see in the New Testament incidental 
mention of the changing phases of civil adminis- 
tration in Palestine ; of the intricate complication 
of Jewish and Gentile customs; the different 
modes of marking time ; Roman and Jewish 
watches ; civil and ecclesiastical taxes ; modes of 
* See Maclear, " Historical Illustrations," p. 12. 



218 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

punishment, Roman and Jewish; the interlacing 
and intricate adjustments of authority of con- 
querors and conquered ; the Roman emperors of 
the time ; the Roman governors, such as Pilate, 
Felix, Festus, Sergius Paulus, and Gallio, with 
glimpses of the characters of all of them and a 
very full portraiture of some; the Jewish kings 
and princes, Herod the Great, Archelaus, Herod 
Antipas, Herod Philip II., Herod Agrippa I., and 
Herod Agrippa II., and find that they stand be- 
fore us on these pages with marked characteristics, 
and then turn to the accounts of Tacitus, Sueto- 
nius, and Josephus, and find that the portraitures 
of these men on their pages are the likenesses of 
the same persons taken from different points of 
view, we see a proof, which nothing can overturn, 
that the men who wrote these books of the New 
Testament must have lived in " the age which 
followed the death of Jesus." In the words of 
the author of " Historical Illustrations " : 

" There have been, it must be allowed, signal 
triumphs won by the genius of poetic and literary 
imagination ; but in all literature there is no 
other instance of the existence of a number of 
separate and independent documents bound up 
in a single volume, relating to an historical period 
which had its records, its archives, its monuments, 
and purporting to give an account of events oc- 
curring within that period, that can be shown to 



IN THE FIRST CENTURY 219 

teem with such minute and truthful incidental 
allusions to facts, at first sight of the most insig- 
nificant import, but which on examination are 
found to have momentous bearing on those 
events. 

" Every quotation from Josephus, Tacitus, or 
Suetonius, every fresh archaeological exploration 
in Palestine, Asia Minor, or Greece, only serves 
to illustrate the minute accuracy with which their 
titles are given to Roman procurators and pro- 
consuls, Greek ' politarchs,' and Asiatic ediles, 
and to demonstrate the fidelity with which dual 
systems of government, of military forces, of cap- 
ital punishment, of language, and of religious life 
are described as blending together and coexisting 
side by side, at the only period when that coexis- 
tence zvas possible, among the strangest of all 
strange people, the Jewish nation, whether living 
in its own land or scattered throughout the Roman 
empire." 

Here is a jewel of more than earthly price and 
luster, and here is its setting. Its figure is com- 
plicated and absolutely unique, yet its setting 
exactly fits it. When we apply this story of the 
gospel to its historical connections and surround- 
ings we find that it fits into them perfectly. As in 
all literature there is no other such jewel, so in all 
history there is no other such setting. This story 
of the Christ belongs to just this place in history, 



220 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

and if the wicked hand of infidelity could tear it 
away and hide its light the annals of nearly nine- 
teen centuries would be thrown into remediless 
confusion, while their great series of events would 
be rendered utterly inexplicable. 

We would not only have to erase the brightest 
pages of the histories of the nations that have 
marched on to the noblest triumphs and gained 
the richest rewards of a Christian civilization, but, 
as the author .just quoted has shown, we would 
have to tear out passages from the annals of hea- 
then writers, like Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny 
the Younger, and make a new edition of the 
works of Josephus. 

The jewel belongs to this setting, the New Tes- 
tament to this time, the apostolic age. 

It is clear that these books of the New Testa- 
ment were written in the apostolic age. This 
implies another fact, namely, that they have 
apostolic authority. For they could not have 
been universally accepted as authoritative, and 
have been appealed to by both the orthodox and 
heretics, unless they had received the approval 
of those who were recognized as the divinely 
appointed guides of the church, the apostles of 
our Lord. Originating in the apostolic age as 
they did, they would have been instantly repu- 
diated by the apostles and those under their in- 
struction if they had been forgeries. But instead 






IN THE FIRST CENTURY 221 

of such repudiation we find indications of their 
acceptance from the very first. Paul speaks of 
the Gospel of Luke as " Scripture " on a level 
with Deuteronomy (i Tim. v. 18): "For the 
Scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox," 
etc. (Deut. xxv. 4). " And, The laborer is worthy 
of his hire " (Luke x. 7). Peter speaks of Paul's 
epistles as wrested by some, like " the other 
Scriptures" (2 Pet. iii. 16). 

We have already seen that John's Gospel was 
evidently supplementary to the three synoptic 
Gospels, and that the epistles of Paul (and we 
may say the same of all the epistles and of the 
Revelation) were built upon the facts of these 
Gospels as their necessary foundation. Thus in 
the New Testament books themselves we see 
plain evidence that some of them were already 
known when others were written. 

But some have asserted that the writers of the 
New Testament do not themselves claim inspira- 
tion and divine authority for their writings. That 
they do not define the mode of inspiration is freely 
acknowledged, and there may not be assertion of 
authority anywhere ; but is it not implied in the 
whole matter and manner of the New Testament 
Scriptures? A father may not very frequently 
remind his children of his position and authority, 
but the very nature and tone of his commands 
lead them to feel and recognize his relation to 



222 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

them as one of authority over them more effec- 
tually than any verbal assertion of that authority 
could do. 

But do not the New Testament writers speak 
with a divine authority? 

Look at the very opening words of most of the 
epistles. We find such expressions as : " Paul, an 
apostle (not from men, neither through man, but 
through Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who 
raised Him from the dead)" (Gal. i. i, R.V.); 
" Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of 
God " (2 Cor. i. 1 ; Col. i. 1 ) ; and, " Peter, an apostle 
of Jesus Christ " (1 Pet. i. 1) ;" Simon Peter, a ser- 
vant and an apostle of Jesus Christ " (2 Pet. i. 1) ; or, 
" This then is the MESSAGE which we have heard 
of Him, and declare unto you" (1 John i. 5). 
Here certainly, not only in tone and manner, 
but in plain words, we have authoritative asser- 
tions. 

Are not the communications in keeping with 
such introductions? 

In 1 Thessalonians iv. 12 Paul speaks of "the 
charge we gave you through the Lord Jesus." 
In 2 Thessalonians ii. 15 the authoritative nature 
of his preaching and of his letters is plainly as- 
serted : " Hold the traditions which ye were 
taught, whether by word, or by epistle of ours." 
In 2 Thessalonians iii. 14 the same Christians are 
commanded, " If any man obey not our word 



IN THE FIRST CENTURY 22 1 

by this epistle, note that man, and have no com- 
pany with him," etc. 

The epistles were evidently to be read as Scrip- 
ture in the assemblies of Christians. In i Thes- 
salonians v. 27 the solemn charge is given, "I 
charge you by the Lord, that this epistle be read 
unto all the holy brethren." 

The Colossians were commanded to read and 
to circulate these Scriptures, and in the direction 
given in the body of the epistle (Col. iv. 16) we 
perhaps have an example of injunctions given 
through the bearers of other epistles as to the 
obligation to read and circulate them. The di- 
rection is, " And when this epistle is read among 
you, cause that it be read also in the church of 
the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the 
epistle from Laodicea." Whether this last-named 
epistle was our Epistle to the Ephesians, or a 
duplicate of it sent to Laodicea, or a distinct 
epistle written to the church of Laodicea and 
containing matter specially designed for these two 
churches alone and not intended for the church 
of future ages, we may never be able to determine. 
But it evidently comes with the stamp of apostolic 
authority to the Laodiceans and Colossians. 

But what shall we say of the claim of authority 
when we find at the close of the whole body of 
writings which we call the New Testament such 
words as these? 



224 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

" If any man shall add unto these things, God 
shall add unto him the plagues that are written 
in this book : and if any man shall take away from 
the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall 
take away his part out of the book of life, and out 
of the holy city, and from the things which are 
written in this book." 

This book undoubtedly comes with the most 
solemn assertion of divine authority that we can 
imagine. As it was evidently intended to stand 
last among the New Testament writings, is it not 
evident that, while the primary reference of this 
warning is to the Book of Revelation, it takes in 
the whole series of writings of which this book 
forms the fitting and awful close? 

Here some may smile, for it is the fashion to 
be very free in such matters just now. But rev- 
erence and awe, we think, are more fitting as we 
hear the last words of the Revelation of our Lord, 
and, longing to be " presented before the presence 
of His glory with exceeding joy," we cry, " Come, 
Lord Jesus, come quickly." And " He who tes- 
tified! these things saith, Surely I come quickly." 



XVIII 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 



225 






XVIII 

THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 

The crowning proof # of the inspiration of the 
Scriptures is a quality in them which the devout 
reader instinctively recognizes as divine. The 
precious ointment " bewrayeth itself." This is 
the evidence on which the faith of the great body 
of believers rests. They may know nothing of 
the history of the New Testament and nothing 
of the many external evidences of the divine ori- 
gin of Christianity about which scholars reason, 
but, in common with the much smaller company 
of the learned, as they bend over this marvel 
among books they feel that, along with much 
that is human, there is that which is divine. The 
characteristics of the many human authors are 
clearly seen, but a divine Author is recognized 
as guiding them into all truth. One speaks here 
as never man spoke. He Himself has said, " My 
sheep hear My voice," and with the ear of faith 
they hear it in the words of His gospel. To the 
227 



2 28 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

believer the contents of the New Testament are its 
most convincing evidence. 

But even for those who are still among the 
spiritually deaf and cannot say when Jesus speaks, 
" This is the voice of my Beloved," the New Tes- 
tament, and especially the Gospels, must bear the 
marks of authenticity and inspiration. No theory, 
however ingenious, can account for certain fea- 
tures in it if its truthfulness and divine origin be 
denied. 

Take but one view of the contents of this book : 
consider only the Person who is revealed in it. 
The greatest intellects have recognized in this 
wonderful portraiture of Christ in the Gospels a 
Person to whom no human hero can be for a 
moment compared, and the conclusion of every 
capable and unprejudiced student must accord 
with the oft-quoted words of Rousseau : " How 
petty are the books of the philosophers, with all 
their pomp, compared with the Gospels ! Can it 
be that writings at once so sublime and so simple 
are the work of men ? Can He whose life they 
tell be Himself no more than a mere man? Is 
there anything in His character of the enthusiast 
or ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what 
purity in His ways! what touching grace in His 
teachings! what loftiness in His maxims! what 
profound wisdom in His words! what presence 
of mind ! what delicacy and aptness in His replies ! 






THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 229 

what an empire over His passions! Where is the 
man, where is the sage who knows how to act, to 
suffer, and to die without weakness and without 
display?" When we come to study Christ as 
portrayed in the Gospels we must conclude, with 
Rousseau, that "men do not invent like this!" 

That Christ was a real person and not a mere 
myth is evident, for one thing, from a most re- 
markable unity in the four descriptions which the 
evangelists give of Him. 

There are indeed apparent discrepancies be- 
tween their accounts in some points, such as we 
always find in the testimony of independent wit- 
nesses about almost any series of occurrences. 
These seeming disagreements, while they clearly 
prove that the evangelists wrote independently 
of one another and thus thoroughly exclude the 
theory of collusion as the explanation of this 
unity, do not serve in any way to mar it. There 
are indeed great differences between the four 
accounts. 

We find Matthew writing, apparently, chiefly 
for "the house of Israel," his "brethren accord- 
ing to the flesh." Consequently, references to 
fulfilments of prophecy are prominent, and dis- 
courses and parables occupy a large part of his 
pages. Christ had long ago said, " I will speak 
unto them in parables." 

Mark writes succinctly and does not give the 



230 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

long discourses so fully or so frequently, but 
pictures vividly the actions of Christ, in descrip- 
tions which we may easily believe to be the repro- 
duction of the lively impressions on the susceptible 
mind of Peter, borne in his memory till they were 
related again and again, with ever fresh interest, 
to his many hearers, and recorded by Mark, under 
his direction.* 

Luke seems to have viewed Christ chiefly as 
He who came to seek " that which was lost" and 
he alone gives us the vivid pictures of the lost 
coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son. 

The Gospel of John is almost wholly unlike the 
others in style and manner and contents. While 
the first three evangelists write, each evidently 
without the knowledge of what others had written, 
John, as. we have seen, indicates by omissions 
and by what he takes for granted as already 
known that he did know of the other Gospels 
when he wrote. In this Gospel Christ's divinity 
is the prominent feature, as it is the subject of its 
very first sentence : " In the beginning was the 
Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
Word was God." 

There is great diversity, and yet there is won- 
derful unity, in the portraiture which illumines 

* See Eusebius, " Hist. Eccl.," book vi., chap. xxv. Hippol- 
ytus gives a realistic touch in describing Mark as " he of the 
maimed finger." 



THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 23 1 

the pages of the four evangelists. The repre- 
sentations of Christ's treatment .of sin and sinners 
furnish a striking illustration of this unity in 
diversity. 

Matthew lets us hear the terrible denunciations 
which He uttered against the " scribes and Phari- 
sees, hypocrites" (Matt, xxiii.),. and describes 
His driving the traders in holy things from the 
temple. Luke (vii. 36-50) draws the picture of 
the lost woman kneeling in grief and tearful pen- 
itence to hear His assurance of her forgiveness 
and His approval of her love for Him who had 
saved her, set in contrast to the cold criticism of 
Simon, the Pharisee at whose table He was sit- 
ting. 

It was riot because He underrated in any de- 
gree the sin of impurity. Matthew lets us hear 
Him on this point (v. 27-29), and we find that 
He who was "holy, harmless, and undefiled " 
had a spirit as sensitive to the slightest taint of 
impurity as the brightest mirror to the faintest 
breath, and that He so abhorred and dreaded its 
effect on His people that He warned against the 
look that indicated the rise of unholy thought 
and desire, as adultery in the heart. Yet, while 
He has nothing but scathing invective for sin in 
the garb of sanctity, He has nothing but words 
of tenderness and encouragement for the fallen 
and penitent. 



2$2 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

Here we see apparent diversity in this stern- 
ness in the one case and tenderness in the other, 
but they exist in harmony in the character of that 
Being whose praises the psalmist spoke in the 
words (Ps. ci. i), " I will sing of mercy and judg- 
ment" and of whom the apostle says, " Behold 
the goodness and severity of God." 

When Christ is accused of sin by His enemies 
it is instructive to see how He answers their al- 
legations. One thing appears in all the Gospels : 
He never admits that He has sinned in any de- 
gree or in any way. For a human being to take 
such a position we all feel would be extravagant 
folly. We know by observation and experience 
what our fallen humanity is, and we know that 
the claim by any man of sinlessness would be 
presumptuous and false. But Christ never admits 
that He has been in fault. His challenge from first 
to last is, "Who is he that convicteth Me of sin?" 

On one occasion His disciples are charged with 
Sabbath-breaking, and He Himself also by impli- 
cation, as He was with them and had authority 
over them. On the Sabbath morning, when per- 
haps they had enjoyed no morning meal or had 
partaken of an insufficient supply of food, the disci- 
ples appeased their hunger by taking advantage 
of a law (Deut. xxiii. 25) which allowed them to 
pluck with their hands the heads of the wheat 
along their way. The Pharisees had no word of 



THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 233 

blame for this, for it was lawful ; but the disciples 
rubbed out the grains of wheat in their hands as 
they went along, and this formed a ground of accu- 
sation, as it was the Sabbath, and their critics 
claimed that this was work and that any work was 
unlawful on the Sabbath. Our Saviour answers 
the charge first from the broad principles of 
common sense, and shows from the case of David 
that necessity was a valid excuse for this amount 
of exertion, and that the Sabbath was made for 
man's benefit and not man for the Sabbath. 

But that which should have convinced them 
that there had been no breach of the Sabbath law 
by His disciples was the fact that He was " Lord 
also of the Sabbath day." He was their Lord and 
the Lord of the Sabbath too, so of course He 
would not allow them to violate His own ordi- 
nance (Matt. xii. 1-8; Mark ii. 23-28; Luke vi. 

i-5). 

John tells of the charge of Sabbath- breaking 
made against Him personally on another occasion, 
because He had on the Sabbath healed the im- 
potent man at the Pool of Bethesda (John v. 1-9). 
The Jews persecuted Him for doing this good 
deed, and even sought to slay Him. What is 
His answer? "But Jesus answered them, My 
Father worketh hitherto, and I work." 

The Father's work of preserving and governing 
goes on uninterruptedly, and Christ works in 



234 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

unity and unison with the Father. He rises to this 
sublime truth again, that He is Lord and there- 
fore that His work cannot but be right. Thus 
on different occasions He is represented by dif- 
ferent evangelists as in a contest with these self- 
righteous ecclesiastics in whose hands the Sabbath 
law, which was meant to be a source of blessing, 
had been transformed into an instrument of torture 
and oppression by their rabbinical additions; and 
each time He rises to the assertion of His Lord- 
ship and divinity. 

The Sabbath, designed for man's comfort and 
relief, a season for the cessation of worldly care 
and work that the higher nature might have its 
exercise in spiritual duties and aspirations, an or- 
dinance fruitful in blessing, had in their hands, 
along with all religion, withered to a dead husk 
of outward formalities. He who is its Lord as- 
serts His right over it, announces its real design, 
and thereby rebukes their mistaken censorious- 
ness. He thus answers their accusations practi- 
cally in the same way in both instances. There is 
diversity in the occasions, the acts, and the words, 
but unity in the great principles announced. 

Matthew has preserved for us the inspiring 
words, "Ye are the light of the world." John 
does not record this saying, but presents us with 
another which at first sight seems inconsistent 
with this: "/am the Light of the world." 



THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 235 

The reconciliation is easy when we find that 
our Saviour is the light-giver and they are its 
receivers (John viii. 12), and that He gives light 
by first giving life (i. 4). " In Him was life ; and 
the life was the light of men." This power of life 
which He communicates, like the power of elec- 
tricity under the right conditions, breaks out in 
them into effulgence, and they individually " shine 
as lights in the world," while together they be- 
come "the light of the world." Yet is He the 
light-giver and therefore " the Light of the world " 
in the highest sense. 

John does not tell of the institution of the 
Lord's Supper, but he does tell of the mysterious 
" eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the 
Son of man," of which spiritual act of receptive 
faith the Lord's Supper is a visible symbol. 

John does not record the parable of the lost 
sheep, but he does tell of the sheep who can never 
be lost, and in each case is presented the same 
loving, all-powerful, divine-human Shepherd, out 
of whose hand, as out of His Father's, no man 
or demon can pluck His sheep. 

We continually see in the Gospels this emer- 
gence of the human and the divine united in Christ. 
He lies down to sleep so absolutely exhausted that 
the howling of the winds and the tossing of the 
billows do not awake Him. He rises up to calm 
the storm with a word — the word of omnipotence. 



236 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

He sits weary on the well, hungry and thirsty 
— a man in His weakness and need. Presently 
He does what not all the angels of God could do 
— gives the water of life to human souls, to be in 
them wells of water springing up into everlasting 
life ; and we see that He is very God, who hath 
life in Himself even as the Father hath life in 
Himself. 

We find Him at one time taking little children 
in His arms with human love and tenderness for 
little ones. At another we behold Him stretch- 
ing forth, as it were, arms of omnipotence and 
saying to all humanity, " Come unto Me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give 
you rest." 

We see Him a homeless wanderer, having not 
where to lay His head, and afterward saying to 
His disciples, " In My Father's house are many 
mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." 

He hungers and thirsts, and is fed from the 
loving gifts of devoted followers; yet He invites 
thousands to partake of feasts that come into 
being without the labor of a single human hand. 

When the Greeks come to Philip, saying, " Sir, 
we would see Jesus," the announcement to Him 
leads Him to say strange things. He is about to 
suffer, and there, under the shadow of the cross, 
His humanity shrinks and trembles at the near 
prospect of the untold anguish He is about to 



THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 237 

endure, and His cry to the Father is like that of 
Gethsemane, as He prays, " Father, save Me from 
this hour." Then, in the triumph of submission, 
with divine knowledge and by divine power He 
says, " But for this cause came I unto this hour. 
Father, glorify Thy name." And, as if in spirit 
hearing in the approach of these Greeks the foot- 
falls of the countless millions who should in the 
ages to come crowd to His cross from the heathen 
world, He exclaims, " And I, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." 

He speaks with just as perfect ease of the 
unseen as of the visible, of the eternal as of the 
temporal. Eternity, past and future, seems as 
clearly in His view as the present. He walks 
with easy tread on the sublime summits of truths 
too high for human discovery and too mysterious 
for full comprehension when revealed, because 
His vision was not bounded by mortal horizons, 
but^ swept across celestial scenes and took in 
eternal verities. 

He came forth from the Father and therefore 
could speak of the glory which He had with Him 
" before the world was " ; could speak of Himself 
while on earth as the " Son of man, which is in 
heaven " ; could say, " He that hath seen Me hath 
seen the Father," and even, " I and My Father 
are one." 

He is betrayed and arrested, but as He is led 



238 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

to His trial as a lamb led to the slaughter, by a 
sentence addressed to one of His followers, He 
for a moment draws aside the veil that hides the 
unseen, and we catch a glimpse of an ambush of 
angelic legions ready at a word to spring to His 
rescue. 

The high priest adjures and threatens Him. 
His answer presents the august scene in which 
they who now thirst for His blood and reject and 
dishonor Him "shall see the Son of man sitting 
on the right hand of power, and coming in the 
clouds of heaven." 

Here such questions as these suggest them- 
selves : 

How is it that these four writers, each in a 
different way, each giving different facts from the 
others, or facts seen from a different standpoint, 
present us a portraiture which is in its great out- 
lines the same in them all, and such a portraiture 
as has never been conceived by human mind or 
drawn by human hand before ? 

Whence comes the inimitable skill by which 
these four men, each in a somewhat different way, 
depict a character full of tenderness and ready to 
bring sympathy, tears, and all possible help to 
the sufferer, even though that sufferer be a sinner, 
while this same character is represented as abso- 
lutely stern and uncompromising in exposing im- 
penitent iniquity under whatever guise, even that 



THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 239 

of religion, and pronouncing judgment and doom 
upon it? 

How is it that they all so make this portrai- 
ture that we see in each presentation of it the 
insoluble mystery of the union of a divine and a 
human nature in one Person ? 

The only rational answer is that such a Person 
really existed and that the writers were divinely 
guided in presenting the portraiture of Him which 
we have in the Gospels. Men do not invent thus 
and do not describe thus. Effects necessarily 
imply causes, and adequate causes. That from 
the pages of all the evangelists, with all their 
differences, there should shine forth this unique, 
marvelous, and infinitely lovely and lovable char- 
acter, and in them all the same character, involves 
a miracle no less wonderful than the greatest deed 
of divine power recorded in the Gospels. Says 
Principal Cairns, in his essay on " Christ, the 
Central Evidence of Christianity " : 

" One Gospel is a marvel ; what shall we say of 
four, each with its distinct plan, its enlargements 
and omissions, its variations even where most 
coincident, its problems as yet unsolved, but 
always yielding something to fresh inquiry, and 
only making more manifest the unchallengeable 
oneness and divinity of the history? The diffi- 
culties of the Gospels from divergence are as noth- 
ing as compared with the impression made by 



240 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

them all of one transcendent creation, and, for my 
part, if I rejected inspiration I should have reason 
to be still more astonished. Some slight mistake 
could so sadly have impaired perfection, or yet 
more easily lowered divinity ; some careless han- 
dling might have deranged the balance at the most 
critical point, or pulled down the structure in 
hopeless disaster. Yet, though we see how dif- 
ferent the plan of each Gospel is, there is not any 
such trace of failure. The long discourses are left 
out by Mark, but in action his Christ equals that 
of Matthew. Luke has his own type both of 
parable and miracle, but the same inimitable 
figure starts up from all. The sorest trial to the 
familiar features comes from the fourth Gospel, 
without a parable and hardly a miracle like the 
foregoing, and with so great a flood of novelty, 
especially toward the end. But unity in diver- 
sity is only the more marvelous. The Christ of 
the fourth Gospel is the Word of God, but He is 
still the Son of man." 

Many have professed to believe that apocryphal 
" Gospels " and other writings with the claim of 
apostolic authorship or authorization have as good 
a right to our confidence as those books which 
form what we now call the New Testament. This 
subject cannot be treated with any fullness here, 
but a mere glance at these documents is sufficient 
to convince us of the falsity of this claim. 



THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 24 1 

The late origin of these spurious "Gospels," 
" Acts," "Epistles," etc., is a proof of the falsity 
of the claims which they make or which are made 
for them as contemporary and inspired writings. 
The fact that our saint's teacher, Irenaeus, born 
about twenty years after John's death and taught 
by Polycarp, who was John's pupil and his con- 
temporary for nearly forty years, represents that 
there were only four Gospels, and even endeavors 
to show that there could be no more, should be 
sufficient to convince us of the falsity of such 
assertions as have been referred to. Put more 
absolutely convincing still is the character of the 
writings themselves when brought into compari- 
son with the New Testament; and there is no 
point in which that comparison brings out a 
sharper contrast than that presented in the various 
portraitures of Christ in these writings and that 
one found in our Gospels. 

The following is the testimony of one who has 
made a special study of the apocryphal Gospels : 

" The case stands thus. Our Gospels present 
us with the picture of a glorious Christ; the 
mythic Gospels with that of a contemptible one. 
Our Gospels have invested Him with the highest 
conceivable form of human greatness ; the mythic 
ones have not ascribed to Him a single action that 
is elevated. In our Gospels He exhibits a super- 
human wisdom ; in the mythic ones a nearly equal 



242 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

superhuman absurdity.* In our Gospels He is 
arrayed in all the beauty of holiness ; in the mythic 
ones this aspect is entirely wanting. . . . The 
miracles of the one and the other are contrasted 
in every point. A similar opposition of character 
runs through the whole current of their thought, 
feeling, morality, and religion, "f 

The same author tells us of these writings : 
" To two of them is assigned as early a date as 
the end of the first half of the second century ; 
the remainder are of a later date. They enable 
us to know for certain what was the class of ac- 
tions which during these times writers of fiction 
were in the habit of ascribing to our Lord. The 
incidents which they record are confined to two 
periods of His life, viz., His childhood and early 
boyhood, on which our Gospels are almost silent, 
and His passion and resurrection; and they omit 
the history of His ministry and teaching. The 
miracles which they attribute to Him are for the 
most part of a grotesque character and are devoid 
of moral impress. They are too painful for quo- 
tation, being little better than caricatures of the 
Holy One of God." \ 

* See the account of the resurrection in the so-called Gospel of 
Peter, for instance ; also B. H. Cowper on apocryphal Gospels. 

t " The Jesus of the Evangelists," by Prebendary Row, p. 381. 

t Essay on " The Unity of the Character of the Christ of the 
Gospels," in " Living Papers," vol. iv. 

The most grateful acknowledgments of obligations are due to 



THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 243 

Yet it must be remembered that the writers of 
these spurious productions had the four Gospels 
before them, and therefore, one would think, 
would have been able to avoid these absurdities. 

Here we may make a passing reference to the 
way in which fiction has dealt with Christ in our 
own day. Two instances will suffice to show that 
where an attempt is made to improve upon the 
Christ of the Gospels the result is a complete 
failure. 

Sir Edwin Arnold, of " The Light of Asia " 
fame, has dipped his brush in some very startling 
colors and produced a picture which no doubt he 
considers very superior to that of Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John. Yet, with all the advantage 
of "great eyes, blue and radiant," and though 
"wine-color shone His hair, glittering and waved," 
we hardly think that this Christ would have 
awakened the enthusiasm of a Paul or have 
moved thousands to face death rather than deny 
Him. 

The same doubt may be expressed about the 
creation of a still more imaginative writer, Marie 
Corelli, who in her recent book, " Barabbas," has 
given her conception of the Saviour. As we look 

the essays of Dr. Wace, Canon Row, Godet, Principal Cairns, and 
Dr. Maclear, published in the very valuable ten volumes called 
" Living Papers," for whatever of worth is to be found in the last 
two chapters of this volume. 



244 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

at her picture, we are glad to say, " This is not 
our Lord." That man whom she portrays as 
standing at Pilate's bar, " with a slight, dreamy 
smile of the beautiful curved lips, and a patient 
expression in the down-dropped eyelids," is not 
the Christ of the Gospels, the Lord of glory. He 
is no weakling, however, for, " still as a statue of 
sunlit marble, He stood erect and calm, His white 
garments flowing backward from His shoulders 
in even, picturesque folds," with arms " suggest- 
ing such mighty muscular force as would have 
befitted a Hercules." 

Such raving, painful to read because it verges 
so closely on blasphemy, would not be quoted 
but to draw attention to the divinely given self- 
restraint of the Gospels, in which the personal 
appearance of Christ is never once mentioned. 

How is it that these " ignorant and unlearned 
men," who witnessed the wonderful deeds and 
heard the wonderful words of Christ, are never 
betrayed into one false touch of an unwise en- 
thusiasm, but have left for us the perfect picture 
of Him who has evoked the admiration and 
adoration of men for more than eighteen cen- 
turies? 

Even the great Milton is thought by some to 
have drawn on his glowing canvas not the Christ 
of the Gospels, but the Christ of Arianism. 

Even when the glorious character is taken up 



THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 245 

by the hands of genius a false image is the result. 
It is besmirched and falsified and belittled in the 
very attempt to magnify it. Even in adding false 
paint and gilding there is always some awkward- 
ness, and it falls from the unskilful hands and is 
broken to shivers, so that all who know and love 
Christ exclaim, like Mary at the empty tomb, 
"They have taken away my Lord!" 

How is it that these four men have presented 
the one glorious Lord and Saviour without a single 
touch of false coloring? How is it that, as this 
Christ of the Gospels becomes known, instinctively 
the knees bow and the tongues confess " that He 
is Lord, to the glory of God the Father"? 

The only reasonable explanation is that the 
authors of this fourfold description spoke of a real 
person who was " the Christ, the Son of the living 
God," and were guided in their delineation by 
the Holy Spirit, who taught them all things and 
brought all things to their remembrance. 

As we look from the Gospels into the Acts, the 
Epistles, and the Revelation, we find the same 
blessed Saviour presented in all. There is no 
disappointing change. We find the same Christ 
more fully revealed in His relations to us and in 
His fitness for the work of our salvation. 

In these books we see more clearly than in the 
Gospels why He is called " the Christ " — " the 
Anointed One." We find that He has been 



246 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

anointed, not with the oil of consecration, which 
was applied to mere human prophets, priests, and 
kings, but with the Holy Ghost without measure. 
We see why it is that, along with His humanity, 
His divinity is so clearly revealed in all the Gos- 
pels and in the other New Testament Scriptures. 
We need a Prophet who with a human heart 
can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, 
and with a human tongue can teach us that which 
He knows with a divine and infallible knowledge. 
The human soul longs and the human hand feels 
for the clasp of a hand that can guide infallibly 
through the darkness of this world up into the 
glory of that which is to come. Our consciences 
cry for cleansing in blood that cleanseth from all 
sin, because it is the blood of a Man who is the 
only begotten Son of God. We, together with all 
that can affect us, have need of the controlling 
hand of a divine-human King who shall reign "till 
His enemies [and ours] be made His footstool," 
and who can bring it about that, in the almost 
infinite intricacies of the machinery of providence, 
all things shall work together for our good. We 
feel the need of a Saviour who can not only 
present us a perfect ideal, the goal to which we 
are to press forward, but who can, out of His 
divine fullness, give " grace for grace," and thus 
enable us to reach that to which we are led to 
aspire, so that at the last we may "be like Him." 



THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 247 

The blessed Saviour, the Christ of the New 
Testament, meets all these requirements of our 
case, and as soon as the penitent soul comes to 
know Him the recognition is a joyful one. The 
song which breaks from the lips is : 

" Thou, O Christ, art all I want, 
All in all in Thee I find." 

We may search all history and all literature, but 
we shall find no other like Him. More than this, 
we might take all the noblest characters presented 
by enthusiastic admirers, who have skilfully drawn 
a veil over their faults while they have extolled 
their virtues, and we might cull the choicest at- 
tributes from all these, and unite them to make 
one character which should combine in itself the 
excellences of all, and yet we should not have a 
Christ. Should we go to the realms of fancy, 
to fiction, to poetry, to the drama, yea, even to 
mythology, with its divinities and impossible 
heroes, yet we could not from them all make up 
a CHRIST. Still He would be to this as Hyperion 
to a satyr. 

When all human genius, in all ages and all 
lands, has never invented such a character, can 
we suppose each of these four " ignorant and un- 
learned men " capable of doing it, and each in a 
somewhat different way from the other three? 

To ask the question is to answer it. Thus, 



248 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 

following the rays of our saint's search-light, we 
have found, standing in the first century, the 
completed temple of revelation. 

As we have looked from room to room, from 
the great central shrine of the Gospels to the 
chambers of the Acts and the Epistles, and down 
the long vista of the corridor of The Revelation, we 
have seen mirrored in each, with some differences 
of light or shade or point of view, the same Christ 
Jesus, the divine-human Redeemer and blessed 
Saviour. Mind and heart join in saying, This is 
" He whom my soul loveth." This is One in 
whom is "life; and the life is the light of men." 
From this temple, completed in the first century, 
the light has shone out through all the centuries 
that have followed. 

Guilty Rome placed herself between this light 
and the people, as the moon comes between the 
sun and the earth to produce an eclipse, and the 
long, cruel Dark Ages — that " break of a thousand 
years in the history of civilization " — came; and 
now, wherever she can shut out the light from the 
people, the shadows still linger. But wherever 
the Bible has gone and been received, there 
blessings immeasurable have followed. This ra- 
diance has awakened the human intellect and led 
it to its most brilliant exploits. It has guided in 
the path of all true progress. It has lighted the 
lamps of learning, and colleges and universities 



THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 249 

have sprung up and flourished in its beams. Good 
government, abundant charities, happy homes, 
glorious characters, and saved souls have been its 
fruits. Can this be a false light? 

Ezekiel in his vision saw waters flowing from 
the sanctuary, and was told : *' Everything shall 
LIVE whither the river cometh. . . . And by 
the river upon the bank thereof, on this side 
and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, 
whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit 
thereof be consumed : it shall bring forth new 
fruit according to his months, because their 
waters they issued out of the sanctuary : and the 
fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof 
for medicine." 

Thus He who is the Light sends forth from 
the fountain of the temple of revelation that 
stream which gives life wherever it flows. At its 
coming to any people who receive it, the wild- 
erness and the solitary place are glad for them, 
and the desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose. 

This Book has done more to benefit and bless 
mankind than all other books together. Can it 
be false, then? If so, the most poisonous foun- 
tain sends forth the purest and most healthful 
stream, and we can gather grapes of thorns and 
figs of thistles, and the corrupt tree brings forth 
good fruit. In other words, TO SUPPOSE THE 
New Testament a spurious and false book 



250 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 

INVOLVES THE SUPPOSITION THAT THE INDIS- 
SOLUBLE TIE BETWEEN CAUSE AND EFFECT IS 
BROKEN — an unspeakable absurdity. 

He is the " true Light " who has brought 
blessings ineffable to all hearts and homes, to all 
tribes and nations, that have received Him. The 
only rational conclusion is that the Holy Scrip- 
tures, the Bible in the Old and New Testaments, 
thus revealing Him to the world, must be the 
Word of God. 

Looking over the sad world that so sorely needs 
Him, we would say : 

" Waft, waft, ye winds, His story, 
And you, ye waters, roll, 
Till, like a sea of glory, 

It spreads from pole to pole. K 



1lo 



